



At 297 eto 














THE UNIVERSITY 
OF ILLINOIS 


LIBRARY 

33\.4 
G39 ™ 
LOB. Wy 


The person charging this material is re- 
sponsible for its return on or before the 
Latest Date stamped below. 

Theft, mutilation, and underlining of books 


are reasons for disciplinary action and may 
result in dismissal from the University. 


UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN 





L161— 0-1096 


Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2021 with funding from 
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 


https://archive.org/details/makingbothendsmeOOclar 


MEET 





THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 


NEW YORK +: BOSTON - CHICAGO 
SAN FRANCISCO 


MACMILLAN & CO., LimitEep 


LONDON + BOMBAY - CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 


THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Lrtp. 
TORONTO 








Photograph by Lewis Hine 


MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


THE INCOME AND OUTLAY OF 
NEW YORK WORKING GIRLS 


BY 
SUE AINSLIE CLARK 
AND 


19D) its age ek 


Nefe Bork 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
IQII 


Ali rights reserved 


COPYRIGHT, IgII, 


By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 





Set up and electrotyped. Published September, rgrz. 


Nortoood WBress 
J. 8. Cushing Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. 
Norwood, Mass., U.8.A. 





Lu ee fis yoy 
i” : one 4 y Tee, ; ue 
€ ag ' ¥) 4 aay ‘ 4 f - Ti i : 
eae Mae Bid, , ¥ 
ae i i? ° 
* 
J 


TO 
FLORENCE KELLEY 
THIS BOOK 


IS DEDICATED 


iG ‘ h 
f Sy oy ey 


{ hy tae ¥ 


4 
y iy 





PREPACEH 


Tuts book is composed of the economic records of 
self-supporting women living away from home in 
New York. Their chronicles were given to the 
National Consumers’ League simply as a testimony 
to truth; and it is simply as a testimony to truth 
that these narratives are reprinted here. 

The League’s inquiry was initiated because, three 
years ago in the study of the establishment of a 
minimum wage, only very little information was 
obtainable as to the relation between the income and 
the outlay of self-supporting women workers. The 
inquiry was conducted for a year and a half by 
Mrs. Sue Ainslie Clark, who obtained the workers’ 
budgets as they were available from young women 
interviewed in their rooms, boarding places, and 
hotels, and at night schools and clubs. After Mrs. 
Clark had collected and written these accounts, I 
supplemented them further in the same manner; and 
rearranged them in a series of articles for Mr. S. S. 
McClure. The budgets fell naturally into certain 
industrial divisions; but, as will be seen from the 
nature of the inquiry, the records were not exhaustive 


vii 


Vili PREFACE 


trade-studies of the several trades in which the 
workers were engaged. They constituted rather an 
accurate kinetoscope view of the yearly lives of chance 
passing workers in those trades. Wherever the facts 
ascertained seemed to warrant it, however, they were 
so focussed as to express definitely and clearly the 
wisdom of some industrial change. 

In two instances in the course of the serial publi- 
cation of the budgets such industrial changes were 
undertaken and are now in progress. The firm of 
Macy & Co. in New York has inaugurated a monthly 
day of rest, with pay, for all permanent women- 
employees who wish this privilege. The change was 
made first in one department and then extended 
through a plan supplied by the National Civic Feder- 
ation to all the departments of the store. 

The Manhattan Laundrymen’s Association, the 
Brooklyn Laundrymen’s Association, and the Laun- 
drymen’s Association of New York State held a 
conference with the Consumers’ League after the 
publication of the Laundry report, and asked to co- 
operate with the League in obtaining the establish- 
ment of a ten-hour day in the trade, additional factory 
inspection, and the placing of hotels and hospital 
laundries under the jurisdiction of the Department 
of Labor. Largely through the efforts of the Laun- 
drymen’s Association of New York State, a bill 
defining as a factory any place where laundry work 


PREFACE ix 


is done by mechanical power passed both houses of 
the last legislature at Albany. A standard for a fair 
house was discussed and agreed upon at the con- 
ference. It is the intention of the League to pub- 
lish within the year a white list of the New York 
steam laundries conforming to this standard in 
wages, hours, and sanitation. 

The New York of the workers is not the New 
York best known to the country at large. The New 
York of Broadway, the New York of Fifth Avenue, 
of Central Park, of Wall Street, of Tammany Hall, 
—these are by-words of common reference; and 
when two years ago the daily press printed the news 
of the strike of thirty thousand shirt-waist makers in 
the metropolis, many persons realized, perhaps for 
the first time, the presence of a new and different 
New York —the New York of the city’s great work- 
ing population. The scene of these budgets is a 
corner of this New York. 

The authors of the book are many more than its 
writers whose names appear upon the title-page. 
The second chapter is chiefly the word-of-mouth tale 
of Natalya Perovskaya, one of the shirt-waist workers, 
a household tale of adventure repeated just as it was 
told to the present writer and to her hostess’ family 
and other visitors during a call on the East Side on 
a warm summer evening. The sixth chapter is almost 
entirely the contribution of Miss Carola Woerishofer, 


xX PREFACE 


Miss Elizabeth Howard Westwood, and Miss Mary 
Alden Hopkins, three young college-bred women 
from Bryn Mawr, Smith, and Wellesley, respectively, 
who made an inquiry for the National Consumers’ 
League in the hospital, hotel, and commercial steam 
laundries of New York. The fifth chapter is com- 
posed largely from a chronicle of the New York 
cloak makers’ strike written by Dr. Henry Mos- 
kowitz, one of the most efficient leaders in attaining 
the final settlement last fall between the employers 
and the seventy thousand members of the Cloak 
Makers’ Union. Mr. Frederick Winston Taylor gave 
the definition of ‘Scientific Management” which 
prefaces the last chapter. It isa pleasure to acknowl- 
edge help of several kinds received from Mrs. Flor- 
ence Kelley, Miss Perkins, and Miss Johnson of the 
Consumers’ League; from Miss Neumann, of the 
Woman’s Trade-Union League; from Miss Pauline 
and Josephine Goldmark, and Mr. Louis D. Bran- 
deis; from Miss Willa Siebert Cather of MWcClure’s 
Magazine , and from Mr. S. S. McClure. 

To record rightly any little corner of contemporary 
history is a communal rather than an individual piece 
of work. While no title so pompous as that of a 
cathedral could possibly be applied except with great 
absurdity to any magazine article, least of all to these 
quiet, journalistic records, yet the writing of any 
sincere journalistic article is more comparable, per- 


PREFACE Xi 


haps, to cathedral work than to any sort of craft in 
expression. If the account is to have any genuine 
social value as a narrative of contemporary truth, it 
will be evolved as the product of numerous human 
intelligences and responsibilities. Especially is this 
true of any synthesis of facts which must be derived, 
so to speak, from many authors, from many authentic 
sources. 

Unstandardized conditions in women’s work are 
so frequently mentioned in the first six chapters that 
their connection with the last chapter will be suff- 
ciently clear. What is the way out of the unstan- 
dardized and unsatisfactory conditions obtaining for 
multitudes of women workers? Legislation is un- 
doubtedly one way out. Trade organization is 
undoubtedly one way out. But legislation is in- 
effectual unless it is strongly backed by conscientious 
inspection and powerful enforcement. In the great 
garment-trade strikes in New York, in spite of their 
victories, the trade orders have gone in such numbers 
to other cities that neither the spirit of the shirt- 
waist makers’ strike nor the wisdom of the Cloak 
Makers’ Preferential Union Agreement have since 
availed to provide sufficient employment for the 
workers. Further, neither legislation nor trade organ- 
ization are permanently valuable unless they are 
informed by justice and understanding. In the same 
manner, unless it is informed by these qualities, the 


xii PREFACE 


new plan of management outlined in the last chapter 
is incapable of any lasting and far-reaching industrial 
deliverance. But it provides a way out, hitherto 
untried. With an account of this way as it appears 
to-day our book ends, as a testimony to living facts 
can only end, not with the hard-and-fast wall of 


dogma, but with an open door. 


EDITH WYATT. 
CHICAGO, March 19, IgII. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER I 


THE INCOME AND OUTLAY OF SOME NEW YORK SALES- 
WOMEN 


CHAPTER II 


THE SHIRT-WAIST MAKERS’ STRIKE 


CHAPTER III 


THE INCOME AND OUTLAY OF SOME NEW YORK FAC- 
TORY WORKERS. (UNSKILLED AND SEASONAL 
Work) 


CHAPTER IV 


THE INCOME AND OUTLAY OF SOME NEW YORK Fac- 
TORY WORKERS. (MONOTONY AND FATIGUE IN 
SPEEDING) . 


CHAPTER V 


THE CLOAK MAKERS’ STRIKE AND THE PREFERENTIAL 
UNION SHOP 


CHAPTER VI 


WoMEN LAUNDRY WORKERS IN NEW YORE . 


CHAPTER VII 


SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT AS APPLIED TO WOMEN’S WORK 
xill 


PAGE 


87 


119 


148 


179 


223 





MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


CAPT ER UL 


THE INCOME AND OUTLAY OF SOME NEW YORK SALES-= 


WOMEN 
I 


ONE of the most significant features of the com- 
mon history of this generation is the fact that nearly 
six million women are now gainfully employed in this 
country. From time immemorial, women have, in- 
deed, worked, so that it is not quite as if an entire 
sex, living at ease at home heretofore, had suddenly 
been thrown into an unwonted activity, as many 
quoters of the census seem to believe. For the 
domestic labor in which women have always engaged 
may be as severe and prolonged as commercial labor. 
But not until recently have women been employed 
in multitudes for wages, under many of the same 
conditions as men, irrespective of the fact that their 
powers are different by nature from those of men, 
and should, in reason, for themselves, for their chil- 
dren, and for every one, indeed, be conserved by 


different industrial regulations. 
B I 


2 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


What, then, are the fortunes of some of these mul- 
titudes of women gainfully employed? What do 
they give in their work? What do they get from it? 
Clearly ascertained information on those points has 
been meagre. 

About two years ago the National Consumers’ 
League, through the initiative of its Secretary, Mrs. 
Florence Kelley, started an inquiry on the subject of 
the standard of living among self-supporting women 
workers in many fields, away from home in New 
York. Among these workers were saleswomen, waist- 
makers, hat makers, cloak finishers, textile workers in 
silk, hosiery, and carpets, tobacco workers, machine 
tenders, packers of candy, drugs, biscuits, and olives, 
laundry workers, hand embroiderers, milliners, and 
dressmakers. 

The Consumers’ League had printed for this pur- 
pose a series of questions arranged in two parts. 
The first part covered the character of each girl’s 
work — the nature of her occupation, wages, hours, 
overtime work, overtime compensation, fines, and 
idleness. The second part of the questions dealt 
with the worker’s expenses — her outlay for shelter, 
food, clothing, rest and recreation, and her effort to 
maintain her strength and energy. In this way the 
League’s inquiry on income and outlay was so arranged 
as to ascertain, not only the worker’s gain and expense 


INCOME AND OUTLAY 3 


in money, but, as far as possible, her gain and ex- 
pense in health and vitality. The inquiry was con- 
ducted for a year and a half by Mrs. Sue Ainslie Clark.! 

The account of the income and outlay of self- 
supporting women away from home in New York 
may be divided, for purposes of record, into the 
chronicles of saleswomen, shirt-waist makers, women 
workers whose industry involves tension, such as 
machine operatives, and women workers whose in- 
dustry involves a considerable outlay of muscular 
strength, such as laundry workers. © 

Among these the narrative of the trade fortunes of 
some New York saleswomen is placed first. Mrs. 
Clark’s inquiry concerning the income and outlay of 
saleswomen has been supplemented by portions of 


1Tn the last six months further accounts from working women 
in the trades mentioned in New York have been received by Miss 
Edith Wyatt, Vice-President of the Consumers’ League of Illinois. 
Aside from the facts ascertained through the schedules filled by the 
workers, and through Mrs. Clark’s and Miss Wyatt’s visits to them, 
information has been obtained through Miss Helen Marot, Secretary 
of the New York Woman’s Trade-Union League, Miss Marion Mac- 
Lean, Director of the Sociological Investigation Committee of the 
Young Women’s Christian Association of the United States, Miss 
May Matthews, Head Worker of Hartley House, Miss Hall, Head 
Worker of the Riverside Association, Miss Rosenfeld, Head Worker 
of the Clara de Hirsch Home, the Clinton Street Headquarters of 
the Union, the St. George Working Girls’ Clubs, the Consumers’ 
League of the City of New York, and the offices or files of the Survey, 
the Independent, the Call, and the International Socialist Review. 


4 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


the records of another investigator for the League, 
Miss Marjorie Johnson, who worked in one of the 
department stores during the Christmas rush of 
IQOQ-IQIO. 

Further informal reports made by the shop-girls in 
the early summer of 1910 proved that the income 
and expenditures of women workers in the stores had 
remained practically unchanged since the winter of 
Mrs. Clark’s report. 

So that it would seem that the budgets, records of 
the investigator, and statements given by the young 
women interviewed last June may be reasonably re- 
garded as the most truthful composite photograph 
obtainable of the trade fortunes of the army of the. 
New York department-store girls to-day.! 

The limitations of such an inquiry are clear. The 
thousands of women employed in the New York 
department stores are of many kinds. From the 
point of view of describing personality and character, 
one might as intelligently make an inquiry among 
wives, with the intent of ascertaining typical wives. 
The trade and living conditions accurately stated in 


1It remains to be said that there are both among saleswomen 
and among women in business for the department stores, buyers, 
assistant buyers, receivers of special orders, advertisers, and heads 
of departments, earning salaries of from twenty dollars to two hun- 
dred dollars a week. But this experience does not represent the 
average fortune the League was interested in learning. 


INCOME AND OUTLAY 5 


the industrial records obtained have undoubtedly, 
however, certain common features. 

Among the fifty saleswomen’s histories collected 
at random in stores of various grades, those that 
follow, with the statements modifying them, seem to 
express most clearly and fairly, in the order followed, 
these common features — low wages, casual employ- 
ment, heavy required expense in laundry and dress, 
semidependence, uneven promotion, lack of training, 
absence of normal pleasure, long hours of standing, 
and an excess of seasonal work. 

One of the first saleswomen who told the League 
her experience in her work was Lucy Cleaver, a young 
American woman of twenty-five, who had entered one 
of the New York department stores at the age of 
twenty, at a salary of $4.50 a week. 


Il 


In the course of the five years of her employment 
her salary had been raised one dollar. She stood for 
nine hours every day. If, in dull moments of trade, 
when no customers were near, she made use of the 
seats lawfully provided for employees, she was at 
once ordered by a floor-walker to do something that 
required standing. 

During the week before Christmas, she worked 
‘standing over fourteen hours every day, from eight to 


6 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


twelve-fifteen in the morning, one to six in the after- 
noon, and half past six in the evening till half past 
eleven at night. So painful to the feet becomes the 
act of standing for these long periods that some of the 
girls forego eating at noon in order to give themselves 
the temporary relief of a foot-bath. For this over- 
time the store gave her $20, presented to her, not as 
payment, but as a Christmas gift. 

The management also allowed a week’s vacation 
with pay in the summer-time and presented a gift 
of $10. i 

After five years in this position she had a disagree- 
ment with the floor-walker and was summarily dis- 
missed. 

She then spent over a month in futile searching for 
employment, and finally obtained a position as a stock 
girl in a Sixth Avenue suit store at $4 a week, a sum 
less than the wage for which she had begun work five 
years before. Within a few weeks, dullness of trade 
had caused her dismissal. She was again facing in- 
definite unemployment. 

Her income for the year had been $281. She lived 
in a large, pleasant home for girls, where she paid only 
$2.50 a week for board and a room shared with her 
sister. Without the philanthropy of the home, she 
could not have made both ends meet. It was fifteen 
minutes’ walk from the store, and by taking this walk 


INCOME AND OUTLAY v1 


twice a day she saved carfare and the price of lunch- 
eon. She did her own washing, and as she could 
not spend any further energy in sewing, she bought 
cheap ready-made clothes. This she found a great 
expense. Cheap waists wear out very rapidly. In 
the year she had bought 24 at 98 cents each. Here 
is her account, as nearly as she had kept it and re- 
called it for a year: a coat, $10; 4 hats, $17; 2 pairs 
of shoes, $5; 24 waists at 98 cents, $23.52; 2 skirts, 
$4.98 ; underwear, $2; board, $130; doctor, $2; total, 
$194.50. This leaves a balance of $86.50. This 
money had paid for necessaries not itemized, — stock- 
ings, heavy winter underwear, petticoats, carfare, va- 
cation expenses, every little gift she had mae, and 
all recreation. 

She belonged to no benefit societies, and she had 
not been able to save money in any way, even with 
the assistance given by the home. So much for her 
financial income and outlay. 

After giving practically all her time and force to her 
work, she had not received a return sufficient to con- 
serve her health in the future, or even to support her 
in the present without the help of philanthropy. She 
was ill, anemic, nervous, and broken in health. 

Before adding the next budget, two points in Lucy 
Cleaver’s outlay should, perhaps, be emphasized in the 
interest of common sense. The first is the remark- 


8 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


able folly of purchasing 24 waists at 98 cents each. In 
an estimate of the cost of clothing, made by one of the 
working girls’ clubs of St. George’s last year,! the girls 
agreed that comfort and a presentable appearance 
could be maintained, so far as expenditure for waists 
was concerned, on $8.50 a year. This amount al- 
lowed for five shirt-waists at $1.20 apiece, and one 
net waist at $2.50. 

In extenuation of Lucy Cleaver’s weak judgment 
as a waist purchaser, and the poor child’s one absurd 
excess, it must, however, be said that the habit of 
buying many articles of poor quality, instead of fewer 
articles of better quality, is frequently a matter, not 
of choice, but of necessity. The cheap, hand-to-mouth 
buying which proves paradoxically so expensive in the 


end is no doubt often caused by the simple fact that 


1 Here are the estimates made by the St. George’s Working Girls’ 
Club of the smallest practicable expenditure for self-supporting girls 
in New York: General expense per week: room, $2; meals, $3; 
clothes, $1.25; washing, 75 cents; carfare, 60 cents; pleasures, 25 
cents; church, 10 cents; club, 5 cents: total $8. Itemized account 
of clothing for the year at $1.25 a week, or $65 a year: 2 pair of shoes 
at $2, and mending at $1.50, $5.50; 2 hats at $2.50, $5; 8 pair of 
stockings at 123 cents, $1; 2 combination suits at 50 cents, $1; 4 
shirts at 123 cents, 50 cents; 4 pairs of drawers at 25 cents, $1; 4 
corset covers at 25 cents, $1; 1 flannel petticoat, 25 cents; 2 white 
petticoats at 75 cents, $1.50; 5 shirt-waists at $1.20, $6; 1 net waist, 
$2.50; 2 corsets at $1, $2; gloves, $2; 2 pairs rubbers at 65 cents, 
$1.30; 1 dozen handkerchiefs at 5 cents, 60 cents; 3 nightgowns at 50 
cents, $1.50; 1 sweater, $2; 2 suits at $15, $30: total, $65.65. 


INCOME AND OUTLAY 9 


the purchaser has not, at the time the purchase is 
made, any more money to offer. Whatever your wis- 
dom, you cannot buy a waist for $1.20 if you possess 
at the moment only 98 cents. The St. George’s girls 
made their accounts on a basis of an income of $8 a 
week. Lucy Cleaver never had an income of more 
than $5.50 a week, and sometimes had less. The 
fact that she spent nearly three times as much as they 
did on this one item of expenditure, and yet never 
could have ‘‘one net waist at $2.50” for festal occa- 
sions, is worthy of notice. 

The other point that should be emphasized is the 
fact that she did her own washing. The more accu- 
rate statement would be that she did her own laundry, 
including the processes, not only of rubbing the 
clothes clean, but of boiling, starching, bluing, and 
ironing. This, after a day of standing in other employ- 
ment, is a vital strain more severe than may perhaps be 
readily realized. Saleswomen and shop-girls have 
not the powerful wrists and muscular waists of accus- 
tomed washerwomen, and are in most instances no 
better fitted to perform laundry work than washer- 
women would be to make sales and invoice stock. 
But custom requires exactly the same freshness in a 
saleswoman’s shirt-waist, ties, and collars as in those of 
women of the largest income. The amount the girls 
of the St, George’s Working Club found it absolutely 


Io MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


necessary to spend in a year for laundering clothes was 
almost half as much as the amount spent for lodging 
and nearly two-thirds as much as the amount originally 
spent for clothing. 

Where this large expense of laundry cannot be met 
financially by saleswomen, it has to be met by sheer 
personal strength. One department-store girl, who 
needed to be especially neat because her position was 
in the shirt-waist department, told us that sometimes, 
after a day’s standing in the store, she worked over 
tubs and ironing-boards at home till twelve at night. 

It is worth noting, as one cause of the numerous 
helpless shifts of the younger salesgirls, that, living, as 
most of them do, in a semidependence, on either rela- 
tives or charitable homes, it is almost impossible for 
them to learn any domestic economy, or the value of 
money for living purposes. It seems significant that 
quite the most practical spender encountered among 
the saleswomen was a widow, Mrs. Green, whose ac- 
counts will be given below, who was for years the 
manager of her own household and resources, and not 
a wage-earner until fairly late in life. 

This helplessness of a semidependent and unedu- 
cated girl may be further illustrated by the chronicle 
of Alice Anderson, a girl of seventeen, who had been 
working in the department stores for three years and 
a half. 


INCOME AND OUTLAY II 


She was at first employed as a check girl in a 
Fourteenth Street store, at a wage of $2.623 a week; 
that is to say, she was paid $5.25 twice a month. Her 
working day was nine and a half hours long through 
most of the year. But during two weeks before Christ- 
mas it was lengthened to from twelve to thirteen and a 
half hours, without any extra payment in any form. 
She was promoted to the position of saleswoman, but 
her wages still remained $2.623 a week. She lived 
with her grandmother of eighty, working occasionally 
as a seamstress, and to her Alice gave all her earnings 
for three years. 

It was then considered better that she should go to 
live with an aunt, to whom she paid the nominal board 
of $1.15 a week. As her home was in West Hoboken, 
she spent two and a half hours every day on the 
journey in the cars and on the ferry. During the 
weeks of overtime Alice could not reach home until 
nearly half past eleven o’clock; and she would be 
obliged to rise while it was still dark, at six o’clock, 
after five hours and a half of sleep, in order to be at her 
counter punctually at eight. By walking from the 
store to the ferry she saved 30 cents a week. Still, 
fares cost her $1.26 a week. This $1.26 a week car- 
fare (which was still not enough to convey her the 
whole distance from her aunt’s to the store) and the 
$1.15 a week for board (which still did not really pay 


12 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


the aunt for her niece’s food and lodging) consumed 
all her earnings except 20 cents a week. 

Alice was eager to become more genuinely self- 
dependent. She left the establishment of her first 
employment and entered another store on Fourteenth 
Street, as cash girl, at $4 a week. The hours in the 
second store were very long, from eight to twelve in 
the morning and from a quarter to one till a quarter 
past six in the afternoon on all days except Saturday, 
when the closing hour was half past nine. 

After she had $4 a week instead of $2.623, Alice 
abandoned her daily trip to West Hoboken and came 
to live in New York. 

Here she paid 6 cents a night in a dormitory of a 
charitably supported home for girls. She ate no 
breakfast. Herluncheon consisted of coffee and rolls for 
rocents. Her dinner at night was a repetition of coffee 
and rolls for to cents. As she had no convenient 
place for doing her own laundry, she paid 21 centsa week 
to have it done. Her regular weekly expenditure was 
as follows : lodging, 42 cents ; board, $1.40; washing, 21 
cents; clothing and all other expenses, $1.97 ; total, $4. 

Of course, living in this manner was quite beyond 
her strength. She was pale, ill, and making the sever- 
est inroads upon her present and future health. Her 
experience illustrates the narrow prospect of promo- 
tion in some of the department stores. 


INCOME AND OUTLAY 13 


III 

“It is significant in this point to compare the annals 
of this growing girl with those of a saleswoman of 
thirty-five, Grace Carr, who had been at work for 
twelve years. In her first employment in a knitting 
mill she had remained for five years, and had been 
promoted rapidly to a weekly wage of $12. The hours, 
however, were very long, from ten to thirteen hours a 
day. ‘The lint in the air she breathed so filled her 
lungs that she was unable, in her short daily leisure, 
to counteract its effect. At the end of five years, as 
she was coughing and raising particles of lint, she was 
obliged to rest for a year. 

Not strong enough to undertake factory work again, 
she obtained a position in the shoe department in one 
of the large stores, where she was not “‘speeded up,” 
and her daily working time of nine hours was less 
severe than that of the knitting mill. In summer 
she had a Saturday half-holiday. There was a system 
of fines for lateness; but on the rare occasions of her 
own tardiness it had not been enforced. The company 
was also generous in granting five-o’clock passes, 
which permitted a girl to leave at five in the afternoon, 
with no deduction from her wage for the free hour. 
She had been with this establishment for six years, 
earning $6 a week; and she had given up hope of ad- 
vancing. 


I4 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


Miss Carr said that her work in the shoe department 
was exhausting, because of the stooping, the frequent 
sitting down and rising, and the effort of pulling shoes 
on and off. In the summer preceding the fall when she 
told of her experience in the store, she had, in reaching 
for a box of shoes, strained her heart in some way, so 
that she lost consciousness immediately, and was ill 
for seven weeks. She failed to recuperate as rapidly 
as she should have done, because she was so com- 
pletely devitalized by overwork. 

The firm was very good to her at this time, sending 
a doctor daily until she was in condition to go to the 
country. It then paid her expenses for two weeks in 
a country home of the Young Women’s Christian Asso- 
clation, and during the three remaining weeks of her 
stay paid her full wage. Miss Carr praised this 
company’s general care of the employees. A doctor 
and nurse were available without charge if a girl 
were ill in the store. A social secretary was 
employed. 

Miss Carr lived in a furnished room with two other 
women, each paying a dollar a week rent. She cared 
nothing for her fellow-lodgers; her only reason for 
spending her time with them in such close quarters 
was her need of living cheaply. She cooked her break- 
fast and supper in the crowded room, at an expense of 
$1.95 a week. She said that her ‘“‘hearty”’ meal was 


INCOME AND OUTLAY 5 


a noon dinner, for which she paid in a restaurant 15 
cents a day. 

After her experience in the summer, she realized 
that she should assure herself of income in case of ill- 
ness. She joined a benefit society, to which she paid 
50 cents a month. This promised a weekly benefit of 
$4 a week for thirteen weeks, and $200 at death. 
She paid also ro cents a week for insurance in another 
company. 

The room was within walking distance of the store, 
so that she spent nothing for carfare. The services 
and social life of a church were her chief happiness. 
Besides her contributions to its support, she had spent 
only $1 a year on “‘good times.”” She did her own 
washing. 

Her outlay in health in these years had been ex- 
treme. She was very worn, thin, and wrinkled with 
hard work, severe economies, and anxiety, although 
she was still in what should have been the prime of 
life. 

Her weekly budget was: lodging, $1; board, $1.95; 
luncheons, $1.05; insurance, 21 cents; clothing, con- 
tributions to church, occasional carfare, and other ex- 
penses, $1.79; total, $6. 

Miss Carr said that her firm was generous in many of 
its policies, but she felt it profoundly discouraging not 
to advance to a wage that would permit decent living. 


16 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


In connection with Miss Carr’s budget the benefit 
system of New York stores should be mentioned. In 
many of the large department stores, monthly dues, 
varying with the wage of the employee, are deducted 
from the pay of each, although in many cases she does 
not know what the return for the dues is to be. These 
dues assure to her, while she remains in the store’s 
employ, a weekly benefit in case of illness, and a death 
benefit. But if she leaves the store, or is discharged, 
the management retains the amount she has been 
forced to pay to it, and gives no return whatever in 
case of her subsequent sickness or death. While she is 
in the store’s employ, the sick benefit varies from one- 
half the girl’s wage to a regular payment of $5 a week 
for from five to thirteen weeks, according to the par- 
ticular rules in each store. The employee must be ill 
five days or a week in order to draw it. Otherwise 
she is docked for absence. 

The Mutual Benefit Fund of the New York Asso- 
ciation of Working Girls’ Societies has in this respect 
a better policy than the stores. Members of the clubs 
pay 55 cents a month for a benefit of $5 for six weeks in 
any one year, and 20 cents a month for a benefit of $3. 
Cessation of membership in a club does not terminate 
connection with the benefit fund, unless the reason for 
leaving is unsatisfactory to the board. Women not 
members of clubs may, under certain conditions, join 


INCOME AND OUTLAY 17 


the benefit fund as associate members, and pay 50 
cents a month for a benefit of $5 a week, 30 cents 
for a benefit of $3 a week, or 80 cents for a benefit of 
$8 a week. These amounts are severally payable for 
six weeks in any one year. 

A number of the stores have trained nurses and doc- 
tors in their employ, to whom the girls may go if they 
are ill. Several of the stores have recreation rooms; 
several have summer homes; several have em- 
ployees’ restaurants, where a really nourishing meal 
can be obtained for 15 cents. 

Miss Carr, struggling against overwhelming odds, 
lived within $6 without charitable aid. With her 
experience may be compared those of two other older 
saleswomen, who were wholly self-supporting. 

Mrs. Green, a shrewd-appearing woman of thirty- 
five, had been wage-earning only two years. She 
began work in Philadelphia in a commission house as a 
saleswoman and corset fitter. Here she was able to 
save from her salary. She also saved very carefully 
the wardrobe she had before she entered business. 
With these reserves, she came to New York to work in 
department stores for the purpose of gaining experi- 
ence in salesmanship and a more thorough knowledge 
of corsets. She expected to be able to command a high 
salary as soon as she had thus increased her compe- 
tence. She went at first to a new and attractive Sixth 


Cc 


18 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


Avenue store, where, working eight hours and a quarter 
a day, she earned $10 a week. Laid off at the end of 
five months, she was idle a month before finding em- 
ployment at another Sixth Avenue store. 

In applying here she told the employer that she 
would not work forlessthan$12 a week. He offered her 
$9, and a commission on all sales beyond $400 a week. 
She refused, and the firm finally gave her what sheasked. 

It proved that her choice was wise, for she found 
that in her very busiest week, when she was exhausted 
from the day’s rush, her sales never reached $400 a 
week, so that she would have received no income at all 
from the proffered commission. 

She had a small room alone in an attractive hotel for 
working girls. For this and breakfasts and dinners 
she paid $5.10 a week. Luncheons cost, in addition, 
about $1.50 a week. She paid 50 cents a week for 
washing, besides doing some herself. Riding to and 
from work nearly every day increased her weekly ex- 
pense 50 cents. This left her $4.40 a week for cloth- 
ing and sundries. 

Mrs. Green seemed extravagantly dressed ; she said, 
however, that she contrived to have effective waists 
and hats by making and trimming them herself, and 
by purchasing materials with care at sales. In dress- 
ing economically without sacrificing effect she was 
aided palpably by skill and deftness. 


INCOME AND OUTLAY 19 


She was in good health; and, though she did not 
save, she had not spent, even in her idle month, any 
of the reserve fund she had accumulated before she 
began to work. 

Another self-supporting saleswoman aided by her 
experience in domestic economy was Zetta Weyman, a 
young woman of twenty-eight, who had begun to work 
for wages at the age of eleven; at this time she still at- 
tended school, but did housework out of school hours. 
When she was older, she was employed as a maid in the 
house of a very kind and responsive couple, who gave 
her free access to their interesting library, where she 
read eagerly. A trip to Europe had been especially 
stimulating. Her employer was considerate, and tried 
to make it possible for her to benefit by the experience. 

Throughout this period she had been observant of 
dress and manner among the cultured people she saw, 
and had applied what she learned to her own dress and 
conduct. At twenty-six, wishing for larger oppor- 
tunities than those she could have in personal service, 
she obtained work in a department store at $7 a week. 
Here she soon advanced to $10 in a department re- 
quiring more than average intelligence. At the end 
of two years she was very much interested in her work. 
It made demands upon her judgment, and offered 
opportunity for increasing knowledge and heightening 
her value to the company. Sheexpected soon to receive 


20 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


a larger wage, as she considered her work worth at 
least $15 a week. Aside from underpay, she thought 
she was fairly treated. She greatly appreciated two 
weeks’ vacation with full wages. 

Zetta gave $2.50 a week for a furnished hall bed- 
room and the use of a bath-room. ‘The warmth from 
the single gas-jet was the sole heat. She made coffee 
in her room for breakfast; a light luncheon sufficed ; 
and dinner in a restaurant cost 25 to 35 cents a day. 
She was often entertained at dinner, by friends. 

She usually rode to work, and walked home, eight 
blocks, spending thus 30 cents a week carfare. All 
living expenses for the week came to about $6. She 
paid for six years $24 a year on an insurance policy 
which promised her $15 a week in case of illness, and 
was cumulative, making a return during the life of the 
holder ; $290 would be due from it in about a year. 

Zetta said that she was extravagant in her expense 
for clothing, but she considered that her social position 
depended upon her appearance. She was very at- 
tractive looking. Her manner had quiet and grace, 
and there was something touching, even moving, in the 
dignity of her pure, clear English, acquired in the teeth 
of a fortune that forced her to be a little scullion and 
cook at the age of eleven. She was dressed with taste 
and care at the time of the interview. Through 
watching sales and through information obtained from 


INCOME AND OUTLAY 21 


heads of departments, she contrived to buy clothing 
of excellent quality, silk stockings, and well-cut suits 
comparatively cheaply. By waiting until the end of 
the season, she had paid $35, the winter before, for a 
suit originally costing $70; $35 was more than she 
had intended to spend, but the suit was becoming 
and she could not resist the purchase. She managed 
to have pretty and well-designed hats for from $2 to 
$5, because a friend trimmed them. 

She spent her vacation with relatives on a farm in 
the country. Railroad fares and the occasional pur- 
chase of a magazine were her only expenditures for 
pleasure. But she had many “good times” going to 
the beaches in the summer with friends who paid her 
way. 

She considered that with careful planning a girl 
could live in fair comfort for $10 a week. But she 
saved nothing. 

The drawback she mentioned in her own arrange- 
ments — the best she could obtain for her present 
wage — was not the cold of her hall bedroom, warmed 
only by the gas-jet, but that she had no suitable place 
for receiving men friends. She was obliged to turn to 
trolley rides and walks and various kinds of excursions, 
—literally to the streets, —for hospitality, when she re- 
ceived a man’s visit. She spoke frequently of one man 


with whom she had many “‘good times.”” She could 
/ 


22 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


not take him to her room. ‘Trolley rides, and walks in 
winter, would pall. She hated park benches as a 
resort for quiet conversation. Where, then, was she 
to see him? Although she disapproved of it, she and 
another girl who had a larger and more attractive 
room than her own had received men there. 

Zetta’s income for the year had been $520. She 
had spent $130 for rent; $105 for dinners; $55 for 
breakfasts, luncheons, and washing; $195 for clothing, 
summer railway fares, and incidentals; $15 for car- 
fare; and $20 for insurance. 


IV 


Zetta’s interest in her daily occupation is somewhat 
unusual in the trade chronicles of the shop-girls. One 
frequently hears complaint of the inefficiency and in- 
attention of New York saleswomen and their rudeness 
to plainly dressed customers. While this criticism 
contains a certain truth, it is, of course, unreasonable 
to expect excellence from service frequently ill paid, 
often unevenly and unfairly promoted, and, except 
with respect to dress, quite unstandardized. 

Further, it must be remembered that the world in 
which the shop-girl follows her occupation is a world 
of externals. The fortunes, talents, tastes, eager hu- 
man effort spent in shop-window displays on Fifth 
Avenue, the shimmer and sparkle of beautiful silks 


INCOME AND OUTLAY 23 


and jewels, the prestige of ‘‘carriage trade,”’ the dis- 
tinction of presence of some of the customers and their 
wealth and their freedom in buying — all the worldli- 
ness of the most moneyed city of the United States here 
perpetually passes before the eyes of Zettas in their 
$1.20 muslin waists so carefully scrubbed the midnight 
before, and of Alices who have had breakfasts for 10 
cents. Isit surprising that they should adopt the New 
York shop-window-display ideal of life manifested 
everywhere around them ? 

The saleswomen themselves are the worst victims 
of their unstandardized employment; and the fact 
that they spend long years of youth in work involving 
a serious outlay of their strength, without training them 
in concentration or individual responsibility or re- 
sourcefulness, but apparently dissipating these powers, 
seems one of the gravest aspects of their occupation. 

A proud and very pretty pink-cheeked little 
English shop-girl, with clear hazel eyes, laid special 
stress upon unevenness of promotion, in telling of her 
fortunes in this country. 

She was sitting, as she spoke, in the parlor of a 
Christian “‘home,’’ which, like that of many others 
where shop-girls live, was light and clean, but had 
that unmistakably excellent and chilling air so subtly 
imparted by the altruistic act of furnishing for others 
— the air that characterizes spare rooms, hotel par- 


24 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


lors, and great numbers of settlement receiving 
rooms. | 

“‘T had always wanted to come to America,” she said 
in her quick English enunciation. “And I saved 
something and borrowed ten pounds of my brother, 
and came. Oh, it was hard the first part of the time 
I was here. I remember, when I first came in at the 
door of this house, and registered, one of the other 
shop-girls here was standing at the desk. Ihad ona 
heavy winter coat, just a plain, rough-looking coat, 
but it’s warm. ‘That girl gave me such a look, a sort 
of sneering look — oh, it made me hot! But that’s 
the way American shop-girls are. I never have spoken 
to that girl. 

‘IT got down to 50 cents before I had a job. There 
was one store I didn’t want to go to. It was cheap, 
and had a mean name. One afternoon, when it was 
cold and dark, I walked up to it at last; and it looked 
so horrid I couldn’t goin. There was another cheap 
store just beyond it, and another. All the shoppers 
were hurrying along. Oh, it was a terrible time that 
afternoon, terrible, standing there, looking at those 
big, cheap New York stores all around me. 

“But at last I went in, and they took me on. It 
wasn’t so bad, after all. In about two months I had 
a chance to go to a better store. I like it pretty well. 
But I can’t save anything. Ihad$8aweek. NowI 


INCOME AND OUTLAY 25 


have $9. I pay $4.50 a week here for board and lodg- 
ing, but I always live up to my salary, spending it for 
clothes and washing. Oh, I worry and worry about 
money. But I’ve paid back my $50. I have a nice 
silk dress now, and a new hat. And nowl’ve got 
them,” she added, with a laugh, “I haven’t got any- 
where to wear them to. I look forward to Sunday 
through the week days; but when Sunday comes, I like 
Monday best. 

“Though I think it doesn’t make much difference 
how you do in the store about being promoted. A girl 
next me who doesn’t sell half as much as I do gets $12 
where I have $9; and the commission we have on 
sales in Christmas week wasn’t given to me fairly. 
The store is kind in many ways, and lets the girls sit 
down every minute when customers aren’t there, and 
has evening classes and club-rooms. But yet the girls 
are discouraged about not having promotions fairly 
and not having commissions straight. Right is right.’’? 

The charmlessness of existence noticeable in most 
of the working girls’ homes was emphasized by a sales- 
woman in the china department of a Broadway de- 
partment store, Kate McCray, a pretty young Irish- 
woman of about twenty-three, who was visited in a 
hotel she said she didn’t like to mention to people, 


1This worker later, however, in the winter of 1911, considered 
she had been paid and promoted fairly. 


26 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


for fear they would think it was queer. ‘“‘ Yousee, it’sa 
boat, a liner that a gentleman that has a large planta- 
tion gave for a hotel for working girls. It seems pecu- 
liar to some people for a girl to be living on the river.””’ 

Miss McCray paid $3.50 a week board at the Maver- 
ick Deep-Sea Hotel. Her salary was $8 a week. She 
had been in the same department for four years, and 
considered it wrong that she received no promotion. 
She could save nothing, as she did none of her own 
washing on account of its inroads of fatigue, and she 
was obliged to dress well. She was, however, in ex- 
cellent health and especially praised the store’s policy 
of advising the girls to sit down and to rest whenever 
no customers were present. 

It was misty and raining on the occasion of my visit 
to the Maverick Deep-Sea Hotel, a liner anchored in 
the East River; and Miss McCray conducted me into 
the cabin to a large party of boys, elderly women, and 
children, most of them visitors like myself, and all 
listening to a powerful-wristed youth happily playing, 
“You'll Come Back and Hang Around,” with heavily 
accented rag-time, on an upright piano. 

‘“‘About seventy girls board on this boat. That 
young lady going into the pantry now Is a stenog- 
rapher — such a bright girl.” ° 

Absorbed in the spectacle of a hotel freedom which 
permitted a guest to go to a pantry at will, whatever 


INCOME AND OUTLAY 27 


the force of her brightness, I followed Miss McCray 
about the boat. It was as if the hotel belonged to the 
girls, while in the Christian homes it had been as if 
everything belonged, not to the girls, but to benevolent 
though carefully possessive Christians. Miss McCray 
praised highly the manager and his wife. 

“About twenty men and boys stay on a yacht an- 
chored right out here. They board on this boat, and 
go to their own boat when the whistle blows at ten 


9 


o’clock,”’ she continued, leading me to the smoking- 
room, where she introduced a number of very young 
gentlemen reading magazines and knocking about 
gutturally together. They, too, seemed proud of their 
position as boarders, proud of the Maverick Deep- 
Sea Hotel. They were nice, boyish young fellows, 
who might have been young mechanicians. 

She showed me the top deck with especial satisfac- 
tion aS we came out into the fresh, rainy air. The 
East River shipping and an empty recreation pier 
rose black on one side, with the water sparkling in 
jetted reflection between; and on the other quivered 
all the violet and silver lights of the city. There were 
perhaps half a dozen tents pitched on deck. 

’ said 
Miss McCray in her gentle voice. ‘‘ They like it so, 


““Some of the girls sleep outdoors up here,’ 


they do it all winter long. Have plenty of cover, and 
just sleep here in the tents. Oh, we all likeit! Some 


ad 


28 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


of the men that were here first have married; and they 
like it so well, they keep coming back here with their 


d 


wives to see us. It’s so friendly,” said the girl, 
quietly ; ‘and no matter how tired I am when I come 
here in the evening, I sit out on the deck, and I look 
at the water and the lights, and it seems as if all my 
cares float away.” 

The good humor of the Maverick Deep-Sea Hotel, 
its rag-time, its boarders from the yacht, the charm 
of the row of tents with the girls in them sleeping their 
healthful sleep out in the midst of the river wind, the 
masts, the chimneys, stars, and city lights, all served 
to deepen the impression of the lack of normal pleasure 
in most of the shop-girls’ lives. 

This starvation in pleasure, as well as low wages and 
overwork, subjects the women in the stores to a temp- 
tation readily conceivable. 

The girls in the stores are importuned, not only by 
men from without these establishments, but also, to 
the shame of the managements, by men employed 
within the stores. 

The constant close presence of this gulf has more 
than one painful aspect. On account of it, not only 
the poor girls who fall suffer, but also the girls who have 
the constant sense of being “‘on guard,” and find it 
wise, for fear of the worst suspicion, to forego all sorts 
of normal delights and gayeties and youthful pleasures. 


INCOME AND OUTLAY 29 


Many girls said, “‘I keep myself to myself”; “I don’t 
make friends in the stores very fast, because you can’t 
be sure what any one is like.”’ This fear of friendship 
among contemporaries sharing the same fortune, fear, 
indeed, of the whole world, seemed the most cruel com- 
ment possible on the atmosphere of the girls’ lives in 
their occupation. 

Another kind of meanness in human relations was 
abundantly witnessed by Miss Johnson, the League’s 
inquirer, who worked in one of the stores during the 
week of Christmas good-will. 

The “rush” had begun when Miss Johnson was 
transferred in this Christmas week from the neckwear 
to the muffler department on the first floor of one of 
the cheaper stores. All the girls stood all day long — 
from eight to twelve and from one to eight at night on 
the first days; from one at noon to ten and eleven at 
night, as the season progressed ; and, on the last dread- 
ful nights, from noon to the following midnight. 
The girls had 35 cents supper money. Except for 
that, all this extra labor was unpaid for. 

The work was incessant. The girls were nervous, 
hateful, spiteful with one another. The manager, a 
beautiful and extremely rough girl of nineteen, swore 
constantly at all of them. The customers were grab- 
bing, insistent, unreasonable from morning to evening, 
from evening to midnight. Behind the counter, with 


30 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


the advance of the day, the place became an inferno 
of nervous exhaustion and exasperation. In the two 
weeks of Miss Johnson’s service one customer once 
thanked her; and one tipped her 5 cents for the 
rapid return of a parcel. Both these acts of considera- 
tion took place in the morning. Miss Johnson said 
that this was fortunate for her, as, at one word of 
ordinary consideration toward the end of her long 
day’s work, she thought she must have burst into tears. 

There was a little bundler in the department, 
Catriona Malatesta, a white, hungry-looking little 
North Italian of fourteen with a thin chin and a dark- 
shadowed, worried face. She had an adored sick sister 
of four, besides six other younger brothers and sisters, 
and a worshipped mother, to whom she gave every 
cent of her wages of three dollars and a half a week. 
An older brother, a day laborer, paid the rent and 
provided food for all of them. Every other family 
expense was met by Catriona’s three dollars and a 
half, so that she was in the habit of spending only five 
cents for her own lunch, and, on the nights of over- 
time, five cents for her own dinner, in order to take 
home the extra thirty cents; and every day she looked 
whiter and older. 

At the beginning of the week before Christmas, 
the store raised Catriona’s wage to four dollars. Her 
mother told her she might have the extra half dollar for 


INCOME AND OUTLAY 31 


herself for Christmas. Though Catriona had worked 
for some months, this was the first money of her own 
she had ever had. With pride she told the department 
how it was to be spent. She was going to surprise her 
mother with a new waist for Christmas, a waist Ca- 
triona had seen in the store marked down to forty-nine 
cents. A ten per cent discount was allowed to em- 
ployees, so that the waist would cost forty-five cents. 
With the remaining five cents Catriona would buy her 
sick Rosa a doll. All her life Rosa had wanted a doll. 
Now, at last, she could have one. 

On the day when she received the money, Catriona 
kept it close at hand, in a little worn black leather 
purse, in a shabby bag hanging from her arm, and not 
out of sight for an instant. 

Her purchases were to be made in the three-quarters 
of an hour allowed for supper. The time Catriona 
consumed in eating her five-cent meal was never long, 
so that, even allowing for prolonged purchasing, her 
absence of an hour was strange. 

“D 
this time, Catie?’’ the manager screamed at her, 





your soul, where in hell have you been all 


angrily, without glancing at her, when she came back 
at last. 

Catriona looked more anxious and white than ever 
before. Her face was stained with weeping. “‘I lost 
my purse,” she said in a dazed, unsteady voice. “It 


32 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


was gone when I opened my bag in the lunch-room. 
I’ve looked for it everywhere. ”’ 

There was a sudden breathless change in the air of 
the department. You could have heard a pin drop. 

‘Better go down to the basement and wash your 
face,’’ said the manager, awkwardly, with unbelievable 
gentleness. 

‘Well,’ she continued suddenly, the minute Ca- 
triona was out of ear-shot, “I’m not so poor but I can 
help to make that up.”’ She took a dollar bill from 
her pocket-book. Every one contributed something, 
though several girls went without their supper for this 
purpose, and one girl walked home four miles after 
midnight. Altogether they could give nearly ten 
dollars. 

The manager sidled awkwardly toward Catriona, 
when she came back from washing her face. ‘‘Here, 
kid,” she muttered sheepishly, pushing the money 
into the little girl’s hand. Catriona, pale and dazed, 
looked up at her — looked at the money, with a shy 
excitement and happiness dawning in her eyes. Then 
she cried again with excitement and joy, and every one 
laughed, and sent her off again to wash her face. 

That night everything was different in the depart- 
ment. There had been a real miracle of transfigura- 
tion. The whole air of intercourse was changed. All 
the girls were gentle and dignified with each other. 


INCOME AND OUTLAY 33 


Catriona’s eyes sparkled with pleasure. Her care- 
worn air was gone. She was a child again. She 
had never had any physical loveliness before; but 
on that night hundreds of passing shoppers looked 
with attention at the delight and beauty of her face. 

On the next day everything went on as before. The 
girls snapped at each other and jostled each other. 
The beautiful manager swore. One girl came, look- 
ing so ill that Miss Johnson was terrified. 

“Can’t you stop, Kitty? You look so sick. For 
heaven’s sake, go home and rest.” 

‘IT can’t afford to go home.” 

Cross and snappish as the girls were, they managed 
to spare Kitty, and to stand in front of her to conceal 
her idleness from the floor-walker, and give her a few 
minutes’ occasional rest sitting down. She went 
through the first hours of the morning as best she 
might, though clearly under pressure of sharp suffering. 
But at about ten the floor-walker, for whom it must be 
said that he was responsible for the sales and general 
presentability of the department, saw her sitting down. 
“Why aren’t you busy?” he called. “Get up.” 

At midnight on Christmas eve, as the still crowd of 
girls walked wanly out of the great store into the bril- 
liant New York street, some one said, ‘‘ How are you, 
Kitty ?” 

She made no reply for a minute. Then she said 

D 


34 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


wretchedly, ‘‘Oh —I hope I’ll be dead before the 
next Christmas.” 


V 


The sheer and causeless misery this girl endured was, 
of course, attributable, not only to the long hours and 
to the standing demanded by her occupation, but to 
the fact that this occupation was continued at a period 
when the normal health of great numbers of women de- 
mands reasonable quiet and rest. 

With a few honorable exceptions! it may be said to 
be the immemorial custom of department stores in 
this country to treat women employees, in so far as 
ability to stand and to stand at all seasons goes, 
exactly as if they were men. 

The expert testimony collected by the publication 
secretary of the National Consumers’ League, Miss 
Josephine Goldmark, for the brief which obtained the 
Illinois Ten-Hour Law, gives the clearest possible rec- 
ord of the outlay of communal strength involved in 
these long hours of standing for women. 

1Macy and Company of New York give to those of their perma- 
nent women employees who desire it a monthly day of rest with pay. 
The Daniels and Fisher Company of Denver refund to any 
woman employee who requests it the amount deducted for a monthly 
day of absence for illness. This excellent rule is, however, said to 
represent here rather a privilege than a practice, and not to be 


generally taken advantage of, because not generally understood. 
The present writer has not been able to learn of other exceptions. 


INCOME AND OUTLAY 35 


Report of “Lancet”? Sanitary Commission on Sanitation in the 
Shop. 1892 


Without entering upon the vexed question of women’s rights, 
we may nevertheless urge it as an indisputable physiological fact 
that, when compelled to stand for long hours, women, especially 
young women, are exposed to greater injury and greater suffer- 
ing than men. 


British Sessional Papers. Vol. XII. 1886. Report from Select 
Committee on Shop Hours Regulation Bill 


Witness, W. Abbott, M.D. 

“Does their employment injuriously affect them, as child- 
bearing women in after years?” 

“According to all scientific facts, it would do so.” 

*‘And you, as a medical man of a considerable number of 
years’ experience, would not look to girls who have been worked 
so many hours in one position as the bearers of healthy, strong 
children ?” 

“T should not.” 

“Then it naturally follows, does it not, that this is a very 
serious matter in the interest of the nation as a whole, apart 
from the immediate injury to the person concerned ?” 

“Yes. As regards the physical condition of the future race.” 


British Sessional Papers. Vol. XII. 1895. Report from the 
Select Committee on Shops. Early Closing Bill 


Witness, Dr. Percy Kidd, M.D., of the University of Oxford, 
Fellow of the College of Physicians and Member of the College 
of Surgeons, attached to London Hospital and Brompton, 
Hospital. 


36 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


“Would this be a fair way of putting it: It is not the actual 
work of people in shops, but having to be there and standing 
about in bad air; it is the long hours which is the injurious part 
Ont: 

“Quite so; the prolonged tension.” 


Official Information from the Reports of the [German] Factory 
Inspectors. Berlin, Bruer, 1898 


The inspector in Hesse regards a reduction of working hours 
to ten for women in textile mills as “‘absolutely imperative,” as 
the continuous standing is very injurious to the female organism. 


Fourteenth International Congress of Hygiene and Demography. 
Berlin, September, 1907. Vol. II. Sec. IV. Fatigue Result- 
ing from Occupation. Berlin, Hirschwald, 1908 


Doctor Emil Roth: 

“My experience and observations do not permit me to feel 
any uncertainty in believing that the injury to health inflicted 
upon even fully capable workers by the special demands of a 
periodically heightened rush of work is never compensated for. 
Under this head we may consider the demands of all seasonal 
work, . . . as also the special rush season in shops before 
Christmas.” 


Night Work of Women in Industry. Reports on its Importance 
and Legal Regulation. Preface by Etienne Bauer. Night 
Work of Women in Industry in Austria. Ilse Von 
Arlt. Jena, Fischer, 1903 


The suitable limits of working time vary with individuals, 
but it is acknowledged that not only is a regularly long day of 
work injurious, but also that a single isolated instance of over-. 
strain may be harmful to a woman all the rest of her life. 


INCOME AND OUTLAY 37 


Proceedings of the French Senate, July 7, 1891. Report on 
the Industrial Employment of Children, Young Girls, and 
Women, 


When I ask, when we ask, for a lessening of the daily toil of 
women, it is not only of the women that we think, it is not prin- 
cipally of the women, it is of the whole human race. It is of 
the father, it is of the child, it is of society, which we wish to 
reéstablish on its foundation, from which we believe it has per- 
haps swerved a little. 


In New York State, the hours of labor of adult 
women (women over twenty-one) in mercantile 


establishments are not limited in any way by law. 
The law concerning seats in stores is as follows :— 


Seats for Women in Mercantile Establishments 


Chairs, stools, or other suitable seats shall be maintained 
in mercantile establishments for the use of female employees 
therein, to the number of at least one seat for every three females 
employed, and the use thereof by such employees shall be al- 
lowed at such times and to such extent as may be necessary for 
the preservation of their health. 

The enforcement of this law is very difficult. The 
mercantile inspectors can compel the requisite num- 
ber of seats. They have successfully issued one hun- 
dred and fourteen orders on this point! to the stores 
within the year 1909. But the use of these seats to 
such extent as may be necessary for the preservation of 
the health of the women employees is another matter. 


1 Ninth Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor, p. 127. 


38 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


For fear of being blacklisted by the merchants, the 
saleswomen will not testify in court in those cases 
where employers practically forbid the use of seats, by 
requesting the employees to do something requiring a 
standing position whenever they sit down. So that in 
these cases the inspectors cannot bring prosecution 
successfully, on account of lack of sufficient evi- 
dence. 

Further, in one store the management especially 
advises the saleswomen to be seated at every moment 
when the presence of a customer does not require her 
to stand. But the saleswoman’s inability to attract 
possible customers while she is seated still keeps her 
standing, in order not to diminish her sales. 

Curiously enough, it would seem that the shopping 
public of a nation professedly democratic will not buy 
so much as a spool of thread from a seated woman. 
There is, of course, much work for women ! — such as 
ironing for instance — in which standing is generally 
considered absolutely necessary. Salesmanship is not 
work of this character. It is primarily custom that 
demands the constant standing seen in the stores; and, 
until shoppers establish a habit of buying of shop-girls 
who are seated, and the stores provide enough seats 
for all saleswomen and permit them to sell when 


1See page 16 (foot-note), “Scientific Management as applied to 
Women’s Work.” 


INCOME AND OUTLAY 39 


seated, the present system of undermining the normal 
health of women clerks will continue unchecked. 

The New York State law in regard to the work of 
the younger women (minors) —in mercantile estab- 
lishments is as follows : — 


Hours of Labor of Minors * 


No female employee between sixteen and twenty-one years 
of age shall be required, permitted, or suffered to work in or in 
connection with any mercantile establishment more than sixty 
hours in any one week; or more than ten hours in any one day, 
unless for the purpose of making a shorter work day of some one 
day of the week ; or before seven o’clock in the morning or after 
ten o’clock in the evening ofany day. This section does not apply 
to the employment of persons sixteen years of age or upward, be- 
tween the eighteenth day of December and the following twenty- 
fourth day of December, both inclusive.? 


That is to say, that, for the holiday season, the time 
of all others when it might seem wise and natural to 
protect the health of the younger women working in 
the great metropolitan markets, for that season, of all 
others, the State specifically provides that the strength 
of its youth is to have no legal safeguard and may be 
subjected to labor without limit. 

Substantially, all the present legal protection for 


1 This statement does not include the excellent New York Child 
Labor Law for children under sixteen, which allows of no exception 
at Christmas time. 

2 Italics ours. 


40 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


workers in the stores was obtained in 1896, after the 
investigation of mercantile establishments conducted 
in 1895 by the Rinehart Commission.! Ever since, an 
annual attempt has been made to perfect the present 
law and to secure its enforcement, which had been left 
in the hands of the local Boards of Health, and was 
practically inoperative until 1908. Enforcement was 
then transferred to the Labor Commissioner, and has 
since that time been actively maintained. 

The hearings on the law relative to mercantile es- 
tablishments are held in Albany in a small room in the 
Capitol before the Judiciary Committee of the Senate 
and the Assembly Commission on Labor. These 
hearings are very fiery. The Support is represented 
by Attorney Mornay Williams, and Mrs. Nathan, 
Mrs. Kelley, Miss Stokes, Miss Sanford, and Miss 
Goldmark of the New York and National Consumers’ 
Leagues, and delegates from the Child Labor Com- 
mittee, the Working-Girls’ Clubs, and the Woman’s 
Trade-Union League. Both men and women speak 
for the amendment.” The Support’s effort for legisla- 


1A New York State Commission, appointed for this purpose in 
the year 1895, through the efforts of the Consumers’ League of the 
city of New York. 

2 For fear of a permanent loss of position the saleswomen them- 
selves have never been urged to appear in support of this legislation, 
nor, except in a few instances where this difficulty has been nullified, 
have they been present at these hearings. 


INCOME AND OUTLAY 4I 


tion limiting hours has regularly been opposed by the 

Retail Dry-Goods Merchants’ Association, which 

yearly sends an influential delegation to Albany. 
“These ladies have been coming here for sixteen 


) 
years, 


said one of the merchants, resentfully, last 
spring. Looking around, and observing changes in 
the faces watching him among adherents of the Sup- 
port, he added: ‘‘Well, perhaps not the same ladies. 
But they have come.” 

“These ladies are professional agitators,” said 
another merchant at another hearing. ‘‘Why, they 
even misled Mr. Roosevelt, when he was Governor, 
into recommending the passage of their bill.” 

Such are some of the reasons offered by the opposi- 
tion for not limiting women’s hours of labor in mercan- 
tile establishments. 

Among the several common features of the ex- 
periences of these New York saleswomen, low wages, 
casual employment, heavy required expense in laundry 
and dress, semidependence, uneven promotion, lack 
of training, absence of normal pleasure, long hours 
of standing, and an excess of seasonal work, the con- 
sideration of this last common condition is placed last 
because its consequences seem the most far-reaching. 

Looking back at these common features in the lives 
of these average American working girls, one has a 
sudden sense that the phenomenon of the New York 


42 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


department stores represents a painful failure in de- 
mocracy. What will the aspect of the New York de- 
partment stores be in the future? For New York 
doubtless will long remain a port of merchandise, one of 
the most picturesque and most frequented harbors of 
the Seven Seas. Doubtless many women still will 
work in its markets. What will their chances in life 
be? 

First, it may be trusted that the State law will not 
forever refuse to protect these women and their future, 
which is also the future of the community, from the 
danger of unlimited hours of labor. Then, the fact 
that in a store in Cincinnati the efficiency of the sales- 
women has been standardized and their wages raised, 
the fact that in a store in Boston the employees have 
become responsible factors in the business, and the 
fact that a school of salesmanship has been opened in 
New York seem to indicate the possibility of a day 
when salesmanship will become standardized and pro- 
fessional, as nursing has within the last century. 
Further, it may be believed that saleswomen will not 
forever acquiesce in pursuing their trade in utterly 
machinal activity, without any common expression 
of their common position. 

Very arresting is the fact that, year after year, 
the Union women go to Albany to struggle for better 
chances in life for the shop-women who cannot at pres- 


INCOME AND OUTLAY 43 


ent wisely make this struggle for themselves. The 
fact that the Union women fail is of less moment than 
that they continue to go. 

But what have the organized women workers, the 
factory girls who so steadfastly make this stand for 
justice for the shop-girls, attained for themselves in 
their fortunes by their Union? It was for an answer 
to this question that we turned to the New York 
shirt-waist makers, whose income and outlay will be 
next considered in this little chronicle of women’s 
wages. 


CHAPTER II 
THE SHIRT-WAIST MAKERS’ STRIKE 


I 


AmoncG the active members of the Ladies Waist 
Makers’ Union in New York, there is a young Russian 
Jewess of sixteen, who may be called Natalya Urusova. 
She is little, looking hardly more than twelve years 
old, with a pale, sensitive face, clear dark eyes, very 
soft, smooth black hair, parted and twisted in braids 
at the nape of her neck, and the gentlest voice in the 
world, a voice still thrilled with the light inflections of 
a child. 

She is the daughter of a Russian teacher of Hebrew, 
who lived about three years ago in a beech-wooded 
village on the steppes of Central Russia. Here a 
neighbor of Natalya’s family, a Jewish farmer, mis- 
understanding that manifesto of the Czar which pro- 
claimed free speech, and misunderstanding socialism, 
had printed and scattered through the neighborhood 
an edition of hand-bills stating that the Czar had pro- 
claimed socialism, and that the populace must rise 
and divide among themselves a rich farm two miles 
away. 

44 


THE SHIRT-WAIST MAKERS’ STRIKE 45 


Almost instantly on the appearance of these _ bills, 
this unhappy man and a young Jewish friend who 
chanced to be with him at the time of his arrest were 
seized and murdered by the government officers — 
the friend drowned, the farmer struck dead with the 
blow of a cudgel. A Christian mob formed, and the 
officers and the mob ravaged every Jewish house in 
the little town. Thirty innocent Jews were clubbed 
to death, and then literally cut to pieces. Natalya 
and her family, who occupied the last house on the 
street, crept unnoticed to the shack of a Roman 
Catholic friend, a woman who hid sixteen Jewish 
people under the straw of the hut in the fields where she 
lived, in one room, with eight children and some pigs 
and chickens. Hastily taking from a drawer a little 
bright-painted plaster image of a wounded saint, this 
woman placed it over the door as a means of averting 
suspicion. Her ruse was successful. ‘‘Are there Jews 
here ?”’ the officer called to her, half an hour afterward, 
as the mob came over the fields to her house. 

“No,” said the woman. 

‘“‘Open the door and let me see.” 

The woman flung open the door. But, as he was 
quite unsuspecting, the officer glanced in only very 
casually; and it was in utter ignorance that the rage 
of the mob went on over the fields, past the jammed 
little room of breathless Jews, 


46 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


As soon as the army withdrew from the town, 
Natalya and her family made their way to America, 
where, they had been told, one had the right of free 
belief and of free speech. Here they settled on the 
sixth floor of a tenement on Monroe Street, on the East 
Side of New York. Nothing more different from the 
open, silent country of the steppes could be conceived 
than the place around them. 

The vista of the New York street is flanked by high 
rows of dingy brick tenements, fringed with jutting 
white iron fire-escapes, and hung with bulging feather- 
beds and pillows, puffing from the windows. By day 
and by night the sidewalks and roads are crowded with 
people, — bearded old men with caps, bare-headed 
wigged women, beautiful young girls, half-dressed 
babies swarming in the gutters, playing jacks. Push 
carts, lit at night with flaring torches, line the pave- 
ments and make the whole thronged, talking place an 
open market, stuck with signs and filled with mer- 
chandise and barter. Everybody stays out of doors as 
much as possible. In summer-time the children sleep 
on the steps, and on covered chicken coops along the 
sidewalk; for, inside, the rooms are too often small 
and stifling, some on inner courts close-hung with 
washing, some of them practically closets, without 
any opening whatever to the outer air. 

Many, many of Natalya’s neighbors here are occu- 


THE SHIRT-WAIST MAKERS’ STRIKE 47 


pied in the garment trade. According to the United 
States census of 1900, the men’s clothing made in facto- 
ries in New York City amounted to nearly three times 
as much as that manufactured in any other city in the 
United States. The women’s clothing made in fac- 
tories in New York City amounted to more than ten 
times that made in any other city; the manufacture 
of women’s ready-made clothing in this country is, 
indeed, almost completely in the hands of New York’s 
immense Jewish population.! 

As soon after her arrival as her age permitted, 
Natalya entered the employment of a shirt-waist fac- 
tory as an unskilled worker, at a salary of $6 a week. 
Mounting the stairs of the waist factory, one is aware 
of heavy vibrations. The roar and whir of the ma- 
chines increase as the door opens, and one sees in a 
long loft, which is usually fairly light and clean, though 
sometimes neither, rows and rows of girls with heads 
bent and eyes intent upon the flashing needles. They 
are all intensely absorbed; for if they be paid by the 
piece, they hurry from ambition, and if they be paid 
by the week, they are “‘speeded up” by the foreman to 
a pace set by the swiftest workers. 

In the Broadway establishment, which may be called 
the Bruch Shirt-waist Factory, where Natalya worked, 
there were four hundred girls — six hundred in the 

1 Union Label Bulletin, Vol. 2, No. 1, p. 1. 


48 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


busy season. The hours were long — from eight till 
half past twelve, a half hour for lunch, and then from 
one till half past six. 

Sometimes the girls worked until half past eight, 
until nine. There were only two elevators in the 
building, which contained other factories. There were 
two thousand working people to be accommodated by 
these elevators, all of whom began work at eight 
o’clock in the morning; so that, even if Natalya 
reached the foot of the shaft at half past seven, it was 
sometimes half past eight before she reached the 
shirt-waist factory on the twelfth floor. She was 
docked for this inevitable tardiness so often that fre- 
quently she had only five dollars a week instead of six. 
This injustice, and the fact that sometimes the fore- 
man kept them waiting needlessly for several hours be- 
fore telling them that he had no work for them, was 
particularly wearing to the girls. 

Natalya was a “‘trimmer” in the factory. She 
cut the threads of the waists after they were finished 
—a task requiring very little skill. But the work of 
shirt-waist workers is of many grades. The earnings 
of makers of ‘‘imported”’ lingerie waists sometimes 
rise as high as $25 a week. Such a wage, however, is 
very exceptional, and, even so, is less high than might 
appear, on account of the seasonal character of the 
work. 


THE SHIRT-WAIST MAKERS’ STRIKE 49 


The average skilled waist worker, when very 
busy, sometimes earns from $12 to $15 a week. Here 
are the yearly budgets of some of the better paid 
workers, more skilled than Natalya — operatives 
receiving from $10 to $15 a week. 

Rachael, a shirt-waist operative of eighteen, had 
been at work three years. She had begun at $5 a 
week and her skill had increased until in a very busy 
week she could earn from $14 to $15 by piece-work. 
“But,” she said, “‘I was earning too much, so I was 
put back at week’s work, at $11 a week. The fore- 
man is a bad, driving man. Ugh! he makes us work 
fast — especially the young beginners.”’ 

Rachael, too, had been driven out of Russia by 
Christian persecution. Her little sister had been 
killed in a massacre. Her parents had gone in one 
direction, and she and her two other sisters had fled 
in another to America. 

Here in New York she lived in a tenement, sharing 
a room with two other girls, and, besides working in 
the shirt-waist factory, did her own washing, made her 
own waists, and went to night school. 

Her income was seriously depleted by the seasonal 
character of her work. Out of the twelve months of 
the year, for one month she was idle, for four months 
she had only three or four days’ work a week, for three 
months she had five days’ work a week, and for four 


E 


5° MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


months only did she have work for all six days. Un- 
happily, during these months she developed a severe 
cough, which lost her seven weeks of work, and gave 
her during these weeks the expense of medicine, a 
doctor, and another boarding place, as she could not 
in her illness sleep with her two friends. 

Her income for the year had been $348.25. Her 
expenses had been as follows: rent for one-third of 
room at $3.50 a month, $42; suppers with landlady 
at 20 cents each, $63; other meals, approximately, 
$90; board while ill, seven weeks at $7, $49; doctor 
and medicine (about) $15; clothing, $51.85; club, 
5 cents a week, $2.60; total, $313.45, thus leaving a 
balance of $34.80. 

Shoes alone consumed over one-half of the money 
used for clothing. They wore out with such amazing 
rapidity that she had needed a new pair once a month. 
At $2 each, except a best pair, costing $2.60, their 
price in a year amounted to $24.60.! 

In regard to Rachael’s expenditure and conserva- 
tion in strength, she had drawn heavily upon her 
health and energy. Her cough continued to exhaust 
her. She was worn and frail, and at eighteen her 
health was breaking. 


1This expense would at this date probably be heavier, as the 
working girls at one of the St. George’s Working Girls’ Clubs estimated 
early this summer that shoes of a quality purchasable two years ago 
at $2 would now cost $2.50. 


THE SHIRT-WAIST MAKERS’ STRIKE 51 


Anna Klotin, another older skilled worker, an able 
and clever Russian girl of twenty-one, an operative 
and trimmer, earned $12 a week. She had been idle 
twelve weeks on account of slack work. For four 
weeks she had night work for three nights a week, and 
payment for this extra time had brought her income up 
to $480 for the year. Of this sum she paid $312 ($6 
a week) for board and lodging alone in a large, pleas- 
ant room with a friendly family on the East Side. To 
her family in Russia she had sent $120, and she had 
somehow contrived, by doing her own washing, mak- 
ing her own waists and skirts, and repairing garments 
left from the previous year, to buy shoes and to pay 
carfare and all her other expenses from the remaining 
$48. She had bought five pairs of shoes at $2 each, 
and a suit for $15. 

Fanny Wardoff, a shirt-waist worker of twenty, who 
had been in the United States only a year, helped her 
family by supporting her younger brother. 

For some time after her arrival in this country the 
ill effects of her steerage. voyage had left her too miser- 
able to work. She then obtained employment as a 
finisher in a skirt factory, where her best wage was $7. 
But her earnings in this place had been so fluctuating 
that she was uncertain what her total income had been 
before the last thirteen weeks. At the beginning of 
this time she had left the skirt factory and become a 


52 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


finisher in a waist factory, where she earned from $10 
to $12 a week, working nine and a half hours a day. 

Her place to sleep, and breakfast and dinner, in a 
tenement, cost $2.50 a week. She paid the same for 
her younger brother, who still attended school. The 
weekly expense was palpably increased by 60 cents a 
week for luncheon and 30 cents for carfare to ride to 
work. She walked home, fifteen blocks. 

Her clothing, during the eight months of work, had 
cost about $40. Of this, $8 had been spent for four 
pairs of shoes. Two ready-made skirts had cost $0, 
and a jacket $10. Her expense for waists was only $3, 
the cost of material, as she had made them herself. 

She spent 35 cents a week for the theatre, and 
economized by doing her own washing. 

Here are the budgets of some shirt-waist operatives 
earning from $7 to $10 a week, less skilled than the 
workers described above, but more skilled than 
Natalya. 

Irena Kovalova, a girl of sixteen, supported her- 
self and three other people, her mother and her 
younger brother and sister, on her slight wage of $9 
a week. She was a very beautiful girl, short, but 
heavily built, with grave dark eyes, a square face, and 
a manner more mature and responsible than that of 
many women of forty. Irena Kovalova had not been 
out of work for one whole week in the year she de- 


THE SHIRT-WAIST MAKERS’ STRIKE 53 


scribed. She had never done night work; but she 
had almost always worked half a day on Sunday — 
except in slack weeks. She was not certain how many 
of these there had been; but there had been enough 
slack time to reduce her income for her family for 
the year to $450. They had paid $207 rent for four 
rooms on the East Side, and had lived on the remaining 
$243, all of which Irena had given to her mother. 

Her mother helped her with her washing, and she 
had worn the clothes she had the year before, with the 
exception of shoes. She had been forced to buy four 
pairs of these at $2 a pair. They all realized that if 
Irena could spend a little more for her shoes they 
would wear longer. ‘‘But for shoes,” she said, with 
a little laugh, ‘‘two dollars —it is the most I ever 
could pay.” 

She was a girl of unusual health and strength, and 
though sometimes very weary at night and troubled 
with eye strain from watching the needle, it was a 
different drain of her vitality that she mentioned as 
alarming. She was obliged to work at a time of the 
month when she normally needed rest, and endured 
anguish at her machine at this season. She had 
thought, she said gravely, that if she ever had any 
money ahead, she would try to use it to have a little 
rest then. 

Molly Zaplasky, a little Russian shirt-waist worker 


54 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


of fifteen, operated a machine for fifty-six hours a 
week, did her own washing, and even went to evening 
school. She had worked for five months, earning $9 
a week for five weeks of this time, and sometimes $6, 
sometimes $7, for the remainder. She and her sister 
Dora, of seventeen, also a shirt-waist maker, had a 
room with a cousin’s family on the East Side. 

Dora had worked a year and a half. She, too, 
earned $9 a week in full weeks. But there had been 
only twenty-two such weeks in that period. For 
seventeen weeks she had earned $6 a week. For four 
weeks she had been idle because of slackness of work, 
and for nine weeks recently she had been too ill to 
work, having developed tuberculosis. Dora, too, did 
her own washing. She made her own waists, and 
went to evening school. She had paid $2.75 a week 
for partial board and for lodging. The food, not 
included in her board, cost about $1 a week. The little 
Molly had paid for Dora’s board and lodging in her 
nine weeks’ illness. Dora, who had worked so val- 
iantly, was quietly expecting just as valiantly her 
turn in the long waiting list of applicants for the 
Montefiore Home for consumptives. She knew that 
the chance of her return to Molly was very slight. 

Her expenditure for food, shelter, and clothing for 
the year had been as follows: room and board (ex- 
clusive of nine weeks’ illness), $161.25; clothing, 


THE SHIRT-WAIST MAKERS’ STRIKE 55 


$41.85; total, $203.10. As her income for the year 
had been $297.50, this left a balance of $94.40 for all 
other expenses. Items for clothing had been: suit, 
$12; jacket, $4.50; a hat, $2.50; shoes (two pairs), 
$4.25; stockings (two pairs a week at 15 cents), 
$15.60; underwear, $3; total, $41.85. 

One point should be accentuated in this budget — 
the striking cost of stockings, due to the daily walk to 
and from work and theill little worker’s lack of strength 
and time for darning. The outlay for footwear in all 
the budgets of the operators is heavy, in spite of the 
fact that much of their work is done sitting. 

Here are the budgets of some of the shirt-waist 
makers who were earning Natalya’s wage of $6 a 
week, or less than this wage. 

Rea Lupatkin, a shirt-waist maker of nineteen, had 
been in New York only ten months, and was at first a 
finisher in a cloak factory. Afterward, obtaining work 
as operator in a waist factory, she could get $4 in 
fifty-six hours on a time basis. She had been in this 
factory six weeks. 

Rea was paying $4 a month for lodging in two rooms 
of a tenement-house with a man and his wife and 
baby and little boy. She saved carfare by a walk of 
three-quarters of an hour, adding daily one and a half 
hours to the nine and a half already spent in operating. 
Her food cost $2.25 a week so that, with 93 cents a 


56 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


week for lodging, her regular weekly cost of living was 
$3.18, leaving her 82 cents for every other expense. 
In spite of this, and although she had been forced to 
spend $3 for examination of her eyes and for eye- 
glasses, Rea contrived to send an occasional $2 back 
to her family in Europe. 

Ida Bergeson, a little girl of fifteen, was visited at 
half past eight o’clock one evening, in a tenement on 
the lower East Side. The gas was burning brightly in 
the room; several people were talking; and this 
frail-looking little Ida lay on a couch in their midst, 
sleeping, in all the noise and light, in complete ex- 
haustion. Her sister said that every night the child 
returned from the factory utterly worn out, she was 
obliged to work so hard and so fast. 

Ida received the same wage as Natalya — $6 a 
week. She worked fifty-six hours a week — eight 
more than the law allows for minors. She paid $4 a 
week for board and a room shared with the anxious 
older sister, who told about her experience. Idaneeded 
all the rest of her $2 for her clothing. She did her own 
washing. As the inquirer came away, leaving the 
worn little girl sleeping in her utter fatigue, she 
wondered with what strength Ida could enter upon 
her possible marriage and motherhood — whether, 
indeed, she would struggle through to maturity. 

Katia Halperian, a shirt-waist worker of fifteen, 


THE SHIRT-WAIST MAKERS’ STRIKE 57 


had been in New York only six months. During 
twenty-one weeks of this time she was employed in a 
Wooster Street factory, earning for a week of nine- 
and-a-half-hour days only $3.50. Katia, like Natalya, 
was a ‘‘trimmer.”’ eof 

After paying $3 a week board to an aunt, she had 
a surplus of 50 cents for all clothing, recreation, doc- 
tor’s bills, and incidentals. 

To save carfare she walked to her work — about forty 
minutes’ distance. Her aunt lived on the fourth 
floor of a tenement. After working nine and a half 
hours and walking an hour and twenty minutes daily, 
Katia climbed four flights of stairs and then helped 
with the housework. 

Sonia Lavretsky, a girl of twenty, had been self- 
supporting for four years. She lived in a most 
wretched, ill-kept tenement, with a family who made 
artificial flowers. She had been totally unable to find 
work for the last five months, but this family, though 
very poor, had kept her with them without payment 
through all this time. 

She had been three months an operative, putting 
cuffs on waists. Working on a time basis, she earned 
$3 the first week and $4 the second. She was then put 
on piece-work, and in fifty-four hours and a half could 
earn only $3. Laid off, she found employment at 
felling cloaks, earning from $3 to $6 a week. But 


58 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


after twelve weeks, trade in this place also had grown 
dull. 

During her idle time she became “‘run down” and 
was ill three weeks. Fortunately, a brother was able 
to pay her doctor’s bills, until he also was laid off dur- 
ing part of her idle time. 

When Sonia had any money she gave her landlady, 
for part of a room in the poor tenement with the 
flower-makers, $3.50 a month, and about $2.50 a week 
forfood. Before her dull season and slack work began, 
she had paid 20 cents a week dues to a self-educa- 
tion society and social club. 

Her brother had given her all the clothing she had. 
The burden of her support evidently fell heavily upon 
him and upon the poverty-stricken family of her 
hostess. And Sonia was in deep discouragement. 
She was about to go away from New York in hopes of 
finding work in Syracuse. 

Getta Bursova, an attractive Russian girl of twenty, 
had worked for eight years — ever since she was twelve. 
She had been employed as a waist operative for six 
years in London and for two in New York. 

Here she worked nine and a half hours daily in a 
factory on Nineteenth Street, earning $5 to $6 a 
week. Of this wage she paid her sister $4 a week for 
food and lodging in an inside tenement room in very 
poor East Side quarters, so far from her work that she 


THE SHIRT-WAIST MAKERS’ STRIKE 59 


was obliged to spend 60 cents a week for carfare. In 
her busy weeks she had never more than $1.40 a week 
left, and often only 60 cents, for her clothing and every 
other expense. 

Getta had been idle, moreover, for nearly six 
months. During this time she had been supported 
by her sister’s family. 

In spite of this defeat in her fortunes, her presence 
had a lovely brightness and initiative, and her inex- 
pensive dress had a certain daintiness. She was eager 
for knowledge, and through all her busy weeks had 
paid ro cents dues to a self-education society. 

Nevertheless, her long dull season was a harassing 
burden and disappointment both for herself and her 
sister’s struggling family. 

Betty Lukin, a shirt-waist maker of twenty, had 
been making sleeves for two years. For nine months 
of the year she earned from $6 to $10 a week; for 
the remaining three months only $2 a week. Her 
average weekly wage for the year would be about $6. 
Of this she spent $3 a week for suppers and a place in 
a tenement to sleep, and about 50 cents a week for 
breakfast and luncheon — a roll and a bit of fruit or 
candy from a push cart. Her father was in New 
York, doing little to support himself, so that many 
weeks she deprived herself to give him $3 or $4. 

She spent 50 cents a week to go to the theatre and 


60 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


ro cents for club dues. She had, of course, very little 
left for dress. She looked ill clad, and she was, 
naturally, improperly nourished and very delicate. 

Two points in Betty’s little account are suggestive: 
one is that she could always help her father. In lis- 
tening to the account of an organizer of the Shirt-waist 
Makers’ Union, a man who had known some 40,000 
garment workers, I exclaimed on the hardships of the 
trade for the number of married men it contained, and 
was about to make a note of this item when he eagerly 
stopped me. ‘Wait, wait, please,” he cried gener- 
ously. ‘‘When you put it down, then put this down, 
too. It is just the same for the girls. The most of 
them are married to a family. They, too, take care 
of others.” 

To this truth, Betty’s expense of $3 to $4 for her 
father from her average wage of $6, and little Molly’s 
item of nine weeks’ board and lodging for her sister, 
bear eloquent testimony. On the girls’ part they 


were mentioned merely as ‘“ 


all in the day’s work,” 
and with the tacit simplicity of that common mortal 
responsibility which is heroic. 

The other fact to be remarked in Betty’s account is 
that she spent 60 cents a week for club dues and the 
theatre, and only 50 cents for all her casual sidewalk 
breakfasts and luncheons from the push carts. Such 


an eager hunger for complete change of scene and 


THE SHIRT-WAIST MAKERS’ STRIKE 61 


thought, such a desire for beauty and romance as 
these two comparative items show, appear in them- 
selves a true romance. Nearly all the Russian shirt- 
waist makers visit the theatre and attend clubs and 
night classes, whatever their wage or their hours of 
labor. Most of them contribute to the support of a 
family. 

These shirt-waist makers, all self-supporting, whose 
income and outlay are described above, were all — 
with the exception of Irena Kovalova, who supported 
a family of four — living away from home. Natalya 
lived with her mother and father. 

She did not do her own washing, though she made 
her own waists and those of her sister and mother. 
But her story is given because in other ways — in 
casual employment, long hours, unfair and undigni- 
fied treatment from her employers, and in the condi- 
tions of her peaceable effort to obtain juster and better 
terms of living — her experience has seemed charac- 
teristic of the trade fortunes of many of the forty 
thousand shirt-waist makers employed in New York 
for the last two years. 

In conditions such as described above, Natalya and 
other shirt-waist makers were working last fall, when 
one day she saw a girl, a piece-worker, shaking her 
head and objecting sadly to the low price the foreman 
was offering her for making a waist. “If you don’t 


62 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


like it,” said the foreman, with a laugh, “why don’t 
you join your old ‘sisters’ out on the street, then?” 

Natalya wondered with interest who these “‘sisters”’ 
were. On making inquiry, she found that the workers 
in other shirt-waist factories had struck, for various 
reasons of dissatisfaction with the terms of their 
trade. 

The factories had continued work with strike 
breakers. Some of the companies had stationed wo- 
men of the street and their cadets in front of the shops 
~ to insult and attack the Union members whenever they 
came to speak to their fellow-workers and to try to 
dissuade them from selling their work on unfair terms. 
Some had employed special police protection and 
thugs against the pickets. 

There is, of course, no law against picketing. 
Every one in the United States has as clear a legal 
right to address another person peaceably on the sub- 
ject of his belief in selling his work as on the subject 
of his belief in the tariff. But on the roth of October 
ten girls belonging to the Union, who had been talk- 
ing peaceably on the day before with some of the 
strike breakers, were suddenly arrested as they were 
walking quietly along the street, were charged with 
disorderly conduct, arraigned in the Jefferson Market 
Court, and fined $1 each. The chairman of the 
strikers from one shop was set upon by a gang of thugs 


“ 


THE SHIRT-WAIST MAKERS’ STRIKE 63 


while he was collecting funds, and beaten and maimed 
so that he was confined to his bed for weeks. 

A girl of nineteen, one of the strikers, as she was 
walking home one afternoon was attacked in the open 
daylight by a thug, who struck her in the side and 
broke one of her ribs. She was in bed for four weeks, 
and will always be somewhat disabled by her injury. 
These and other illegal oppressions visited on the 
strikers roused a number of members of the Woman’s 
Trade-Union League to assist the girls in peaceful 
picketing. 

Early in November, a policeman arrested Miss 
Mary E. Dreier, the President of the Woman’s Trade- 
Union League, because she entered into a quiet con- 
versation with one of the strike breakers. Miss 
Dreier is a woman of large independent means, so- 
cially well known throughout New York and Brook- 
lyn. When the sergeant recognized her as she came 
into the station, he at once discharged her case, repri- 
manded the officer, and assured Miss Dreier that she 
would never have been arrested if they had known who 
she was. 

This flat instance of discrimination inspired the 
officers of the Woman’s Trade-Union League to protest 
to Police Commissioner Baker against the arbitrary 
oppression of the strikers by the policemen. He was 
asked to investigate the action of the police. He 


64 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


replied that the pickets would in future receive as 
much consideration as other people. The attitude 
of the police did not, however, change. 

It was to these events, as Natalya Urusova found, 
that the foreman of the Bruch factory had referred 
when he asked the girls, with a sneer, why they didn’t 
join their “‘sisters.”’ Going to the Union headquarters 
on Clinton Street, she learned all she could about the 
Union. Afterward, in the Bruch factory, whenever 
any complaints arose, she would say casually, in pre- 
tended helplessness, “‘But what can we do? Is there 
any way to change this?” Vague suggestions of the 
Union headquarters would arise, and she would inquire 
into this eagerly and would pretend to allow herself to 
be led to Clinton Street. So, little by little, as the long 
hours and low wages and impudence from the foreman 
continued, she induced about sixty girls to under- 
stand about organization and to consider it favorably. 

On the evening of the 22d of November, Natalya, 
and how many others from the factory she could not 
tell, attended a mass meeting at Cooper Union, of 
which they had been informed by hand-bills. It was 
called for the purpose of discussing a general strike of 
shirt-waist workers in New York City. The hall was 
packed. Overflow meetings were held at Beethoven 
Hall, Manhattan Lyceum, and Astoria Hall. In the 
Cooper Union addresses were delivered by Samuel 


THE SHIRT-WAIST MAKERS’ STRIKE 65 


Gompers, by Miss Dreier, and by many others. Fi- 
nally, a girl of eighteen asked the chairman for the 
privilege of the floor. She said: ‘‘I have listened to 
all the speeches. I am one who thinks and feels from 
the things they describe. I, too, have worked and 
suffered. I am tired of the talking. I move that we 
go on a general strike.”’ 

The meeting broke into wild applause. The 
motion was unanimously indorsed. The chairman, 
Mr. Feigenbaum, a Union officer, rapped on the 
table. ‘“‘Do you mean faith?” he called to the work- 
ers. “Will you take the old Jewish oath?” Thou- 
sands of right hands were held up and the whole 
audience repeated in Yiddish:! “If I turn traitor to 
the cause I now pledge, may this hand wither from 
the arm I now raise.” 

This was the beginning of the general shirt-waist 
strike. A committee of fifteen girls and one boy was 
appointed at the Cooper Union meeting, and went from 
one to the other of the overflow meetings, where the 
same motion was offered and unanimously indorsed. ~ 


II 


“But I did not know how many workers in my shop 
had taken that oath at that meeting. I could not tell 
how many would go on strike in our factory the next 


1 Constance Leupp, in the Survey. 


66 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


day,” said Natalya, afterward. ‘‘When we came back 
the next morning to the factory, though, no one went 
to the dressing-room. We all sat at the machines with 
our hats and coats beside us, ready to leave. The 
foreman had no work for us when we got there. But, 
just as always, he did not tell when there would be 
any, or if there would be any at all that day. And 
there was whispering and talking softly all around 
the room among the machines: ‘Shall we wait like 
this?’ ‘There is a general strike.’ ‘Who will get 
up first?’ ‘It would be better to be the last to get 
up, and then the company might remember it of you 
afterward, and do well for you.’ But I told them,” 
observed Natalya, with a little shrug, “‘‘What differ- 
ence does it make which one is first and which one is 
last?’ Well, so we stayed whispering, and no one 
knowing what the other would do, not making up our 
minds, for two hours. Then I started to get up.” 
Her lips trembled. ‘‘And at just the same minute 
all — we all got up together, in one second. No one 
after the other; no one before. And when I saw it — 
that time — oh, it excites me so yet, I can hardly 
talk about it. So we all stood up, and all walked out 
together. And already out on the sidewalk in front 
the policemen stood with the clubs. One of them 
said, ‘If you don’t behave, you'll get this on your 
head.’ And he shook his club at me. 


THE SHIRT-WAIST MAKERS’ STRIKE 67 


“We hardly knew where to go — what to do next. 
But one of the American girls, who knew how to 
telephone, called up the Woman’s Trade-Union 
League, and they told us all to come to a big hall a 
few blocks away. After we were there, we wrote out 
on paper what terms we wanted: not any night work, 
except as it would be arranged for in some special need 
for it for the trade; and shorter hours; and to have 
wages arranged by a committee to arbitrate the price 
for every one fairly; and to have better treatment 
from the bosses. 

“Then a leader spoke to us and told us about pick- 
eting quietly, and the law.’ 

‘Our factory had begun to work with a few Italian 


1 The circular of advice issued a little later by the Union reads as 
follows : — 


RULES FOR PICKETS 


Don’t walk in groups of more than two or three. 

Don’t stand in front of the shop; walk up and down the block. 

Don’t stop the person you wish to talk to; walk along side of 
him. 

Don’t get excited and shout when you are talking. 

Don’t put your hand on the person you are speaking to. Don’t 
touch his sleeve or button. This may be construed as a “technical 
assault.” 

Don’t call any one “‘scab”’ or use abusive language of any kind. 

Plead, persuade, appeal, but do not threaten. 

If a policeman arrest you and you are sure that you have committed 
no offense, take down his number and give it to your Union officers. 


68 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


strike breakers.! The next day we went back to the 
factory, and saw five Italian girls taken in to work, and 
then taken away afterward in an automobile. I was 
with an older girl from our shop, Anna Lunska. The 
next morning in front of the factory, Anna Lunska 
and I met a tall Italian man going into the factory 
with some girls. So I said to her: ‘These girls fear 
us in some way. They do not understand, and I will 
speak to them, and ask them why they work, and tell 
them we are not going to harm them at all — only to 
speak about our work.’ 

“I moved toward them to say this to them. Then 
the tall man struck Anna Lunska in the breast so hard, 
he nearly knocked her down. She couldn’t get her 
breath. And I went to a policeman standing right 
there and said, ‘Why do you not arrest this man for 
striking my friend? Why do you let him do it? 
Look at her. She cannot speak; she is crying. She 
did nothing at all.’ Then he arrested the man; and 
he said, ‘But you must come, too, to make a charge 
against him.’ The tall Italian called a man out of the 


1 In the factories where the Russian and Italian girls worked side by 
side, their feeling for each other seems generally to have been friendly. 
After the beginning of the strike an attempt was made to antagonize 
them against each other by religious and nationalistic appeals. It 
met with little success. Italian headquarters for Italian workers 
wishing organizations were soon established. Little by little the 
Italian garment workers are entering the Union. 


THE SHIRT-WAIST MAKERS’ STRIKE 69 


factory, and went with me and Anna Lunska and the 
three girls to the court.” 

But when Natalya and Anna reached the court, and 
had made their charge against the tall Italian, to 
their bewilderment not only he, but they, too, were 
conducted downstairs to the cells. He had charged 
them with attacking the girls he was escorting into 
the factory. 

“They made me go into a cell,” said Natalya, 
“and suddenly they locked usin. Then I was fright- 
ened, and I said to the policeman there, ‘Why do you 
do this? I have done nothing at all. The man 
struck my friend. I must send for somebody.’ 

“He said, ‘You cannot send for any one at all. 
You are a prisoner.’ 

“We cried then. We were frightened. We did 
not know what to do. 

“After about an hour and a half he came and said 
some one was asking for us. We looked out. It was 
Miss Violet Pike. A boy I knew had seen us go into 
the prison with the Italian, and not come out, and so 
he thought something was wrong and he had gone to 
the League and told them. 

‘‘So Miss Pike had come from the League; and 
she bailed us out; and she came back with us on the 
next day for our trial.” 

On the next morning the case against the tall 


7O MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


Italian was rapidly examined, and the Italian dis- 
charged. He was then summoned back in rebuttal, 
and Natalya and Anna’s case was called. Four 
witnesses, one of them being the proprietor of the 
factory, were produced against them, and stated that 
Natalya and Anna had struck one of the girls the 
Italian was escorting. At the close of the case against 
Natalya and Anna, Judge Cornell said:? ‘‘I find the 
girls guilty. It would be perfectly futile for me to 
fine them. Some charitable women would pay their 
fines or they could get a bond. I am going to com- 
mit them to the workhouse under the Cumulative 
Sentence Act, and there they will have an opportunity 
of thinking over what they have done.”’ 

‘Miss Violet Pike came forward then,” said Na- 
talya, ‘‘and said, ‘Cannot this sentence be mollified ?’ 

‘And he said it could not be mollified. 

“They took us away in a patrol to the Tombs. 

‘“‘We waited in the waiting-room there. The 
matron looked at us and said, ‘You are not bad girls. 
I will not send you down to the cells. You can do 
some sewing for me here.’ But I could not sew. I 
felt so bad, because I could not eat the food they gave 
us at noon for dinner in the long hall with all the other 
prisoners. It was coffee with molasses in it, and oat- 


1 Extract from the court stenographer’s minutes of the proceedings 
in the Per trial. 


THE SHIRT-WAIST MAKERS’ STRIKE rp 


meal and bread so bad that after one taste we could 
not swallow it down. Then, for supper, we had the 
same, but ‘soup, too, with some meat bones in it. 
And even before you sat down at the table these bones 
smelled so it made you very sick. But they forced 
you to sit down at the table before it, whether you 
ate or drank anything or not. And the prisoners 
walked by in a long line afterward and put their spoons 
in a pail of hot water, just the same whether they had 
eaten anything with the spoons or not. 

“Then we walked to our cells. It was night, and 
it was dark — oh, so dark in there it was dreadful ! 
There were three other women in the cell — some of 
them were horrid women that came off the street. 
The beds were one over the other, like on the boats — 
iron beds, with a quilt and a blanket. But it was so 
cold you had to put both over you ; and the iron springs 
underneath were bare, and they were dreadful to lie 
on. There was no air; you could hardly breathe. 
The horrid women laughed and screamed and said 
terrible words. 

“Anna Lunska felt so sick and was so very faint, I 
thought what should we do if she was so much worse 
in the night in this terrible darkness, where you could 
see nothing at all. Then I called through the little 
grating to a woman who was a sentinel that went 
by in the hall all through the night, ‘My friend is 


72 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


sick. Can you get me something if I call you in the 
night P’ 

‘‘The woman just laughed and said, ‘Where do you 
think you are? But if you pay me, I will come and 
see what I can do.’ 

‘“‘In a few minutes she came back with a candle, 
and shuffled some cards under the candlelight, and 
called to us, ‘Here, put your hand through the grate 
and give me a quarter and [’ll tell you who your fellows 
are by the cards.’ Then Anna Lunska said, ‘We do 
not care to hear talk like that,’ and the woman went 
away. 

‘‘All that night it was dreadful. In the morning 
we could not eat any of the breakfast. They took 
us in a wagon like a prison with a little grating, and 
then in a boat like a prison with a little grating. As 
we got on to it, there was another girl, not like the rest 
of the women prisoners. Shecried and cried. And I 
saw she was a working girl. I managed to speak to 
her and say, ‘Who are you?’ She said, ‘I ama 
striker. I cannot speak any English.’ That was all. 
They did not wish me to speak to her, and I had to 
go on. 

‘“‘From the boat they made us go into the prison 
they call Blackwell’s Island. Here they made us put 
on other clothes. All the clothes they had were much, 
much too large for me, and they were dirty. They 


THE SHIRT-WAIST MAKERS’ STRIKE 73 


had dresses in one piece of very heavy, coarse material, 
with stripes all around, and the skirts are gathered, 
andso heavy forthe women. They almost drag you 
down to the ground. Everything was so very much 
too big for me, the sleeves trailed over my hands so 
far and the skirts on the ground so far, they had to 
pin and pin them up with safety-pins. 

“Then we had the same kind of food I could not eat ; 
and they put us to work sewing gloves. But I could 
not sew, I was so faint and sick. At night there was 
the same kind of food I could not eat, and all the time 
I wondered about that shirt-waist striker that could 
not speak one word of English, and she was all alone 
and had the same we had in other ways. When we 
walked by the matron to go to our cells at night, at 
first she started to send Anna Lunska and me to differ- 
ent cells. She would have made me go alone with one 
of the terrible women from the street. But I was so 
dreadfully frightened, and cried so, and begged her so 
to let Anna Lunska and me stay together, that at last 
she said we could. 

“Just after that I saw that other girl, away down the 
line, so white, she must have cried and cried, and 
looking so frightened. I thought, ‘Oh, I ought to ask 
for her to come with us, too.’ But Ididnotdare. I 
thought, ‘I will make that matron so mad that she 
will not even let Anna Lunska and me stay together.’ 


74 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


So I got almost to our cell before I went out of the line 
and across the hall and went back to the matron and 
said: ‘Oh, there is another Russian girl here. She is all 
alone. She cannot speak one word of English. Please, . 
please couldn’t that girl come with my friend and me?’ 

“She said, ‘Well, for goodness’ sake! So you want 
to band all the strikers together here, do you? How 
long have you known her ?’ 

‘T said, ‘I never saw her until to-day.’ 

“The matron said, ‘For the land’s sake, what do 
you expect here ?’ but she did not say anything else. 
So I went off, just as though she wasn’t going to let 
that girl come with us; for I knew she would not want 
to seem as though she would do it, at any rate. 

‘“‘But, after we were in the cell with an Irish woman 
and another woman, the door opened, and that Rus- 
sian girl came in with us. Oh, she was so glad! 

‘“‘After that it was the same as the night before, 
except that we could see the light of the boats pass- 
ing. But it was dark and cold, and we had to put 
both the quilt and the blanket over us and lie on the 
springs, and you must keep all of your clothes on to 
try tobe warm. But the air and the smells are so bad. 
I think if it were any warmer, you would almost faint 
there. I could not sleep. 

“The next day they made me scrub. But I did 
not know how to scrub. And, for Anna Lunska, she 


THE SHIRT-WAIST MAKERS’ STRIKE 75 


wet herself all over from head to foot. So they said, 
very cross, ‘It seems to us you do not know how to 
scrub a bit. You can go back to the sewing depart- 
ment.’ On the way I went through a room filled with 
negresses, and they called out, ‘Look, look at the little 
kid.’ And they took hold of me, and turned me 
around, and all laughed and sang and danced all 
around me. These women, they do not seem to mind 
at all that they are in prison. 

“In the sewing room the next two days I was so sick 
I could hardly sew. The women often said horrid 
things to each other, and I sat on the bench with them. 
There was one woman over us at sewing that argued 
with me so much, and told me how much better it was 
for me here than in Russian prisons, and how grateful 
I should be. 

“T said, ‘How is that, then? Isn’t there the same 
kind of food in those prisons and in these prisons? 
And I think there is just as much liberty.’”’ 

On the last day of Natalya’s sentence, after she 
was dressed in her own little jacket and hat again and 
just ready to go, one of the most repellent women of 
the street said to her, “I am staying in here and 
you’re going out. Give me a kiss for good-by.” 
Natalya said that this woman was a horror to her. 
“But I thought it was not very nice to refuse this; so 
I kissed her a good-by kiss and came away.” 


76 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


The officers guarded the girls to the prison boat for 
their return to New York. There, at the ferry, stood 
a delegation of the members of the Woman’s Trade- 
Union League and the Union waiting to receive them. 

Such is the account of one of the seven hundred 
arrests made during the shirt-waist strike, the chronicle 
of a peaceful striker. 

As the weeks went on, however, in spite of the advice 
of the Union officers, there were a few instances of 
violence on the part of the Union members. Among 
thirty thousand girls it could not be expected that 
every single person should maintain the struggle in 
justice and temperance with perfect self-control. In 
two or three cases the Union members struck back 
when they were attacked. Ina few cases they became 
excited and attacked strike breakers. In one fac- 
tory, although there was no violence, the workers 
conducted their negotiations in an unfair and unfor- 
tunate manner. They had felt that all their condi- 
tions except the amount of wages were just, and they 
admired and were even remarkably proud of the man- 
agement, a firm of young and well-intentioned manu- 
facturers. Early in the general strike, however, they 
went out without a word to the management, without 
even signifying to it in any way the point they consid- 
ered unjust. The management did not send to in- 
quire. After a few days it resumed work with strike 


THE SHIRT-WAIST MAKERS’ STRIKE "7 


breakers. The former employees began picketing. 
The management sent word to them that it would not 
employ against them, so long as they were peaceful 
and within the law, any of the means of intimidation 
that numbers of the other firms were using — special 
police and thugs. The girls sent word back that they 
would picket peacefully and quietly. But afterward, 
on their own admission, which was most disarming in 
its candor, they became careless and “‘too gay.” 
They went picketing in too large numbers and were 
too noisy. Instantly the firm employed police. 
Before this, however, the girls had begun to discuss 
and to realize the unintelligence of their behavior in 
failing to send a committee to the management to 
describe their position clearly and to obtain terms. 
They now appointed and instructed such a committee, 
came rapidly to terms with the management, and have 
been working for them in friendly relations ever since. 

While in general the strike was both peaceful in 
conduct and just in demand and methods of demand 
on the part of the strikers, these exceptions must, of 
course, be mentioned in the interests of truth. Further, 
it would convey a false impression to imply that every 
striker arrested had as much sense and force of charac- 
ter as Natalya Urusova. Natalya was especially pro- 
tected in her ordeal by a vital love of observation and 
a sense of humor, charmingly frequent in the present 


78 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


writer’s experience of young Russian girls and women. 
With these qualities she could spend night after night 
locked up with the women of the street, in her funny, 
enormous prison clothes, and remain as uninfluenced 
by her companions as if she had been some blossom- 
ing geranium or mignonette set inside a filthy cellar 
as a convenience for a few minutes, and then carried 
out again to her native fresh air. But such qualities 
as hers cannot be demanded of all very young and 
unprotected girls, and to place them wantonly with 
women of the streets has in general an outrageous 
irresponsibility and folly quite insufficiently implied 
by the experience of a girl of Natalya’s individual 
penetration and self-reliance. 


III 


In the period since the strike began many factories 
had been settling upon Union terms. But many 
factories were still on strike, and picketing on the part 
of the Union was continuing, as well as unwarranted 
arrests, like Natalya’s, on the part of the employers 
and the police. The few exceptions to the general rule 
of peaceful picketing have been stated. Over two 
hundred arrests were made within three days early in 
December. On the 3d of December a procession of 
ten thousand women marched to the City Hall, ac- 
companying delegates from the Union and the Wo- 


THE SHIRT-WAIST MAKERS’ STRIKE 79 


man’s Trade-Union League, and visited Mayor 
McClellan in his office and gave him this letter : — 


HONORABLE GEORGE B. MCCLELLAN, 
Mayor of the City of New York. 

We, the members of the Ladies’ Shirt-waist Makers’ 
Union, a body of thirty thousand women, appeal to 
you to put an immediate stop to the insults and in- 
timidations and to the abuses to which the police have 
subjected us while we have been picketing. This is 
our lawful right. 

We protest to you against the flagrant discrimina- 
tion of the Police Department in favor of the employ- 
ers, who are using every method to incite us to vio- 
lence. 

We appeal to you directly in this instance, instead 
of to your Police Commissioner. 

We do this because our requests during the past six 
months have had no effect in decreasing the outrages 
perpetrated upon our members, nor have our requests 
been granted a fair hearing. 

Yours respectfully, 
S. SHINDLER, Secretary. 


The Mayor thanked the committee for bringing 
the matter to his attention, and promised to take up 
the complaint with the Police Commissioner. 


80 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


But the arrests and violence of the police continued 
unchecked. 

On the 5th of December the Political Equality 
League, at the instigation of Mrs. O. H. P. Belmont, 
held a packed meeting for the benefit of the Shirt- 
waist Makers’ Union. Many imprisoned girls were 
present, and gave to the public clear, straightforward 
stories of the treatment they had received at the hands 
of the city. The committee of the meeting had offered 
the Mayor and other city officials a box, but they re- 
fused to be present. 

Again the arrests and violence continued without 
protection for the workers. Nevertheless their cause 
was constantly gaining, and although all attempts at 
general arbitration were unsuccessful, more and more 
employers settled with the operatives. They con- 
tinued to settle during December and January until 
the middle of February. All but thirteen of the shops 
in New York had then made satisfactory terms with 
the Union workers. It was officially declared that 
the strike was over. 

Natalya’s shop had settled with the operatives on 
the 23d of January, and she went back to work on the 
next day. 

She had an increase of $2 a week in wages — $8 a 
week instead of $6. Her hours were now fifty-two 
a week instead of sixty — that is to say, nine and one- 


THE SHIRT-WAIST MAKERS’ STRIKE 81 


half hours a day, with a Saturday half-holiday. But 
she has since then been obliged to enter another fac- 
tory on account of slack work. 

Among the more skilled workers than Natalya in 
New York to-day, Irena Kovalova, who supports her 
mother and her younger brother and sister, has $11 
a week instead of $9. She is not obliged to work on 
Sunday, and her factory closes at five o’clock instead of 
six on Saturday. “I have four hours less a week,” 
she said with satisfaction. The family have felt able 
to afford for her a new dress costing $11, and material 
for a suit, costing $6. A friend, a neighbor, made this 
for Irena as a present. 

Among the older workers of more skill than Irena, 
Anna Klotin, who sent $120 home to her family last 
year, has now, however, only $6, $7, and $8 a week, 
and very poor and uncertain work, instead of her 
former $12 a week. Hers was one of the thirteen 
factories that did not settle. Of their one hundred and 
fifty girls, they wished about twenty of their more 
skilled operators to return to them under Union con- 
ditions, leaving the rest under the old long hours of 
overtime and indeterminate, unregulated wages. 
Anna was one of the workers the firm wished to retain 
on Union terms, but she felt she could not separate 
her chances in her trade from the fortunes of her one 
hundred and thirty companions. She refused to 


G 


82 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


return under conditions so unjust for them. She has 
stayed on in her boarding place, as her landlady, realiz- 
ing Anna’s responsible character, is always willing to 
wait for money when work is slack. She has bought 
this year only two pairs of shoes, a hat for 50 cents, 
and one or two muslin waists, which she made herself. 
She has lived on such work as she could find from time 
to time in different factories. Anna did not grudge 
in any way her sacrifice for the less skilled workers. 


) 


‘“‘In time,” she said, ‘“‘we will have things better for 
all of us.” And the chief regret she mentioned was 
that she had been unable to send any money home 
since the strike. 

The staunchest allies of the shirt-waist makers 
in their attempt to obtain wiser trade conditions were 
the members and officers of the Woman’s Trade-Union 
League, whose response and generosity were constant 
from the beginning to the end of the strike. The 
chronicle of the largest woman’s strike in this country 
is not yet complete. A suit is now pending against 
the Woman’s Trade-Union League and the Union for 
conspiracy in restraint of trade, brought by the Sit- 
tomer Shirt-waist Co. A test suit is pending against 
Judge Cornell for false imprisonment, brought by 
one of the shirt-waist strikers. 

The whole outcome of the strike in its effect on 
women’s wages in the shirt-waist trade, their income 


THE SHIRT-WAIST MAKERS’ STRIKE 83 


and outlay in their work, both financially and in vital- 
ity, cannot, of course, yet be fully known. The state- 
ment that there has been a general rise of wages must 
be modified in other ways than that suggested by the 
depletion of Anna Klotin’s income in the year since 
the strike. In factories where price on piece-work is 
subject to arbitration between a Union committee of 
the workers and the firm, the committee is not always 
able to obtain a fair price for labor. One of the larg- 
est factories made a verbal agreement to observe 
Union conditions, but it signed no written contract, 
and has since broken its word. It discriminates 
against Union members, and it insists on Sunday work 
and on night work for more than two nights a week. 
Further, during the seventeen weeks of the strike 
many shirt-waist orders ordinarily filled in New York 
were placed with New Jersey and Pennsylvania firms. 
The present New York season has been unusually 
dull, and now, on this writing, early in August, many 
girls are discouraged on account of the slight amounts 
they earn through slack work. 

“But that is not the fault of the employers,” said 
one of the workers. ‘‘You must be reasonable for 
them. You cannot ask them for work they are not 
able to obtain to give you.”’ Her remark is quoted 
both from its wisdom and for another purpose. She 
was the girl who will always be disabled by the attack 


84 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


of her employer’s thug. Her quiet and instinctive 
mention of the need of justice in considering condi- 
tions for employers had for the listener who heard 
her a most significant, unconscious generosity and 
nobility. 

Looking back upon the shirt-waist strike nearly 
a year afterward, its profoundest common value 
would appear to an unprejudiced onlooker to be its 
spirit. Something larger than a class spirit, some- 
thing fairer than a mob spirit, something which may 
perhaps be called a mass spirit, manifested itself in 
the shirt-waist makers’ effort for better terms of life. 

“The most remarkable feature of the strike,” 
says a writer in the Cail, “‘is the absence of leaders. 
All the girls seem to be imbued with a spirit of activ- 
ity that by far surpasses all former industrial upris- 
ings. One like all are ready to take the chairmanship, 
secretaryship, do picket duty, be arrested, and go to 
prison.”’ 

There has never before been a strike quite like the 
shirt-waist makers’ strike. Perhaps there never will 
be another quite like it again. When every fair 
criticism of its conduct has been faced, and its errors 
have all been admitted, the fact remains that the New 
York strike said, ‘‘ All for one and one for all,”’ with a 
magnetic candor new and stirring in the voice of the 

1 Therese Malkiel, December 22. 


THE SHIRT-WAIST MAKERS’ STRIKE 85 


greatest and the richest city of our country — per- 
haps new in the voice of the world. Wonderful it is 
to know that in that world to-day, unseen, unheard, are 
forces like those of that ghetto girl who, in the mean- 
est quarter of New York, on stinted food, in scanty 
clothes, drained with faint health and overwork, could 
yet walk through her life, giving away half of her wage 
by day to some one else, enjoying the theatre at night, 
and, in the poorest circumstances, pouring her slight 
strength out richly like a song for pleasure and devo- 
tion. Wonderful it is to know that when Natalya 
Urusova was in darkness, hunger, fright, and cold on 
Blackwell’s Island, she still could be responsibly con- 
cerned for the fortunes of a stranger and had some- 
thing she could offer to her nobly. Wonderful to 
know that, after her very bones had been broken by 
the violence of a thug of an employer, one of these 
girls could still speak for perfect fairness for him with 
an instinct for justice truly large and thrilling. Such 
women as that ennoble life and give to the world a 
richer and altered conception of justice — a justice of 
imagination and the heart, concerned not at all with 
vengeance, but simply with the beauty of the perfect 
truth for the fortunes of all mortal creatures. 

Besides the value to the workers of the spirit of 
the shirt-waist strike, they gained another advantage. 
This was of graver moment even than an advance in 


86 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


wages and of deeper consequences for their future. 
They gained shorter hours. 

What, then, are the trade fortunes of some of 
those thousands of other women, other machine opera- 
tives whose hours and wages are now as the shirt- 
waist makers’ were before the shirt-waist strike? 
What do some of these other women factory workers, 
unorganized and entirely dependent upon legislation 
for conserving their strength by shorter working 
hours, give in their industry? What do they get 
from it? For an answer to these questions, we turn 
to some of the white goods sewers, belt makers, and 
stitchers on children’s dresses, for the annals of their 
income and outlay in their work away from home in 
New York. 


CHAPTER III 


THE INCOME AND OUTLAY OF SOME NEW YORK 
FACTORY WORKERS 


[Unskilled and Seasonal Factory Work] 
I 


BESIDES the accounts of the waist makers, the Na- 
tional Consumers’ League received in its inquiry 
specific chronicles from skilled and from unskilled 
factory workers, both hand workers and machine 
operatives — among others, packers of drugs, bis- 
cuits, and olives, cigarette rollers, box makers, um- 
brella makers, hat makers, glove makers, fur sewers, 
hand embroiderers, white goods workers, skirt mak- 
ers, workers on men’s coats, and workers on children’s 
dresses. 

As will be seen, the situation occupied and described 
by any individual girl may in a year or five years be 
no longer hers, but that of some other worker. So 
that the synthesis of these chronicles is presented, 
not as a composite photograph of the industrial 
experiences in any one trade, but rather as an accurate 
kinetoscope view of the yearly life of chance passing 
factory workers. 

87 


88 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


For the purposes of record these annals may be 
loosely divided into those of unskilled and seasonal 
factory workers, and those whose narratives ex- 
pressed the effects of monotony and fatigue, from 
speeding at their tasks. This division must remain 
loose to convey a truthful impression. For the same 
self-supporting girl has often been a skilled and an 
unskilled worker, by hand, at a machine, and in several 
industries. 

Discouragement at the lack of opportunity to 
advance was expressed by almost all the narrators 
of their histories who were engaged in unskilled fac- 
tory work. Among them, Emily Clement, an Ameri- 
can girl, was one of the first workers who gave the 
League an account of her experience. 

Emily was tending an envelope machine, at a wage 
of $6 a week. She was about twenty years old; and 
before her employment at the envelope machine she 
had worked, at the age of fourteen, for a year in a 
carpet mill; then for two years in a tobacco factory ; 
and then for two years had kept house for a sister and 
an aunt living in an East Side tenement. 

She still lived with them, sharing a room with her 
sister, and paying $3 a week for her lodging, with 
board and part of her washing. She did the rest of 
her washing, and made some of her sister’s clothes and 
all of her own. This skill had enabled her to have for 


UNSKILLED FACTORY WORKERS 89 


$5.20, the cost of the material, the pretty spring suit 
she wore — a coat, skirt, and jumper, of cloth much 
too thin to protect her from the chill of the weather, 
but stylishly cut and becoming. 

In idle times she had done a little sewing for friends, 
for her income had been quite inadequate. During 
the twenty-two weeks she had been in the factory 
she had had full work for eleven and one-half weeks, 
at $6; half-time for eight and one-half weeks, at $3; 
and two weeks of slack work, in each of which she 
earned only $1.50. 

She had no money at all to spend for recreation ; 
and, in her hopelessness of the future and her natural 
thirst for pleasure, she sometimes accepted it from 
chance men acquaintances met on the street. 

Another unskilled worker of twenty, Sarina Bash- 
kitseff, intended to escape from her monotonous 
work and low wage by educating herself in a private 
evening school. 

For this she contrived to save $4 a month out of her 
income of $4 a week. Sarina packed powders in a 
drug factory from eight to six o’clock, with three- 
quarters of an hour for lunch. She was a beautiful 
and brilliant girl, who used to come to work in the 
winter dressed in her summer coat, with a little 
woollen under-jacket to protect her from the cold, and 
a plain cheap felt hat, much mocked at by the Ameri- 


go MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


can girls. Sarina scorned the mental scope of these 
girls; scorned to spend for dress, money with which 
she could learn to read “‘Othello” and “King Lear” 
in the original; and scorned to spend in giggling the 
lunch hour, in which she might read in Yiddish news- 
papers the latest tidings of the struggle in Russia. 

In the drug factory, and in her East Side hall bed- 
room, she lived in a world of her own —a splendid, 
generous world of the English tragedies she studied at 
night school, and of the thrilling hopes and disap- 
pointments of the Russian revolution. 

She had been in New York a year. In this time 
she had worked in an artificial flower factory, earning 
from $2 to $2.25 a week; then as a cutter in a box fac- 
tory, where she had $3 a week at first, and then $5, for 
ten hours’ work a day. She left this place because the 
employer was very lax about payment, and sometimes 
cheated her out of small amounts. She then tried 
finishing men’s coats; but working from seven-thirty 
to twelve and from one to six daily brought her only 
$3 a week and severe exhaustion.! 

From her present wage of $4 she spent 60 cents a 
week for carfare and $4.25 a month for her share of a 
tenement hall bedroom. Although she did not live 


1 See Report on Condition of Woman and Child Wage-earners in 
the United States. Volume II, Men’s Ready-made Clothing, pages 
E4I-157 ; 160-165 ; 384-395. 


UNSKILLED FACTORY WORKERS QI 


with them, her mother and father were in New York, 
and she had her dinners with them, free of cost. Her 
luncheon cost her from 7 to 1o cents a day, and her 
breakfast consisted of 14 cents’ worth of rolls. 

All that made Sarina Bashkitseff’s starved and 
drudging days endurable for her was her clear deter- 
mination to escape from them by educating herself. 
Her fate might be expressed in Whitman’s words, 
“Henceforth I ask not good fortune, I myself am good 
fortune.” 

Whatever her circumstances, few persons in the 
world could ever be in a position to pity her. 

Marta Neumann, another unskilled factory worker, 
an Austrian girl of nineteen, was also trying to escape 
from her present position by educating herself at 
night school, but was drained by cruel homesickness. 

Marta had spent all her youth, since her childhood, 
at home,—four years in New York, —in factory 
work, without the slightest prospect of advancement. 
Her work was of the least skilled kind — cutting off 
the ends of threads from men’s suspenders, and fold- 
ing and placing them in boxes. She earned at first 
$3 a week, and had been advanced to $5 by a 50- 
cent rise at every one of the last four Christmases 
since she had left her mother and father. But she 
knew she would not be advanced beyond this last 
price, and feared to undertake heavier work, as, 


Q2 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


though she had kept her health, she was not at all 
strong. 

She worked from eight to six, with half an hour at 
noon. On Saturday the factory closed at five in 
winter and at one in summer. Her income for the 
year had been $237.50. She had spent $28.50 for 
carfare; $13 for a suit; $2 for a hat; and $2 fora pair 
of shoes she had worn for ten months. Her board 
and lodging with a married sister had cost her $2.50 
a week, less in one way than with strangers. But 
she slept with part of her sister’s family, did her own 
washing and her sister’s, scrubbed the floor, and rose 
every day at half past five to help with the work and 
prepare her luncheon before starting for the factory 
at seven. 

Marta could earn so little that she had never been 
able to save enough to make her deeply desired journey 
back to Austria to see her mother and father. Al- 
though both their children were in the new country, 
her mother and father would not be admitted under 
the immigration law, because her father was blind. 

The lack of opportunity to rise, among older un- 
skilled factory workers, may be illustrated by the 
experience of Mrs. Hallet, an American woman of 
forty, a slight, gentle-voiced little widow, who had 
been packing candies and tying and labelling boxes 
for sixteen years. In this time she had advanced 


UNSKILLED FACTORY WORKERS 93 


from a wage of $4 a week to a wage of $6, earned by a 
week of nine-hour days, with a Saturday half-holiday. 

However, as with Marta, this had represented pay- 
ment from the company for length of service, and not 
an advance to more skilled or responsible labor with 
more outlook. In Mrs. Hallett’s case this was partly 
because the next step would have been to become a 
clerk in one of the company’s retail stores, and she 
was not strong enough to endure the all-day standing 
which this would require. Mrs. Hallett liked this 
company. The foreman was considerate, and a 
week’s vacation with pay was given to the employees. 

Mrs. Hallett lived in an excessively small, unheated 
hall bedroom, on the fourth floor of an enormous old 
house filled with the clatter of the elevated railroad. 
On the night of the inquirer’s call, she was pathetically 
concerned lest her visitor should catch cold because 
“‘she wasn’t used to it.”’ She lighted a small candle 
to show her the room, furnished with one straight hard 
chair, a cot, and a wash-stand with a broken pitcher, 
but with barely space besides for Mrs. Clark and her 
kind, public-spirited little hostess. They sat, drowned 
at times in the noise of the elevated, in almost com- 
plete darkness, as Mrs. Hallett insisted on making a 
vain effort to extract some heat for her guest from the 
single gas-jet, by attaching to it an extremely small 
gas-stove. 


04 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


For this room, which was within walking distance 
of the candy factory, Mrs. Hallet paid $1.75 a 
week. Her breakfast of coffee and rolls in a bakery 
near by cost her 1o cents daily. She apportioned 15 
or 25 cents each for her luncheon or dinner at res- 
taurants. In her hungriest and most extravagant 
moments she lunched for 30 cents. Her allowance for 
food had to be meagre, because, as she had no laun- 
dry facilities, she was obliged to have her washing 
done outside. Sometimes she contrived to save a 
dollar a week toward buying clothing. But this meant 
living less tidily by having less washing done, or 
going hungrier. During the last year her expense for 
clothing had been a little more than $23: summer hat, 
$1; winter hat, $1.98; best hat, $2; shoes (2 pairs at 
$2.98, 2 pairs rubbers), $7.16; wrap (long coat), 
$2.98; skirt (a best black brilliantine, worn two years), 
at $5.50, $2.75; underskirt (black sateen), 98 cents; 
shirtwaist (black cotton, worn every day in the year), 
98 cents; black tights, 98 cents; 2 union suits at 
$1.25 (one every other year), $1.25; 6 pairs stockings 
at 25 cents, $1.50; total, $23.56. 

She said with deprecation that she sometimes went 
to the theatre with some young girl friends, paying 
25 cents for a seat, “because I like a good time now 
and then.” 


These trade fortunes represent as clearly as possible 


SEASONAL FACTORY WORK 95 


the usual industrial experience of the women workers 
in unskilled factory labor who gave accounts of their 


income and outlay in their work away from home in 
New York. 


IT 


The chronicles printed below, taken from estab- 
lishments of different kinds and grades, express as 
clearly as possible the several features most common to 
the trade fortunes the workers described — uncertain 
and seasonal employment, small exploitations, mo- 
notony in occupation, and fatigue from speeding. 

Because of uncertain and seasonal employment, 
machine operatives in the New York sewing industries 
frequently change from one trade to another. This 
had been the experience of Yeddie Bruker, a young 
Hungarian white-goods worker living in the Bronx. 

The tenements of the Bronx appear as crowded 
as those of the longer-settled neighborhoods of Man- 
hattan, the lower East Side, Harlem, Chelsea, and the 
cross streets off the Bowery, where so many self- 
supporting factory workers live. These newer-built 
lodgings, too, have close, stifling halls, and inner 
courts hung thick with washing. Here, too, you see, 
through the windows, flower makers and human hair 
workers at their tasks; and in the entries, hung with 
Hungarian and German signs, the children sit crowded 


96 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


among large women with many puffs of hair and 
a striking preference for frail light pink and blue 
princess dresses. These blocks of Rumanian and 
Hungarian tenement districts, their fire-escapes hung 
with feather beds and old carpets, and looking like 
great overflowing waste-baskets, are scattered in 
among little bluff ledges, scraggy with walnut brush, 
some great rocks still unblasted, and several patches of 
Indian corn in sloping hillside empty lots — small, 
strange heights of old New York country, still unsub- 
merged by the wide tide of Slav and Austrian immi- 
gration. 

In this curious and bizarre neighborhood, Yeddie 
Bruker and her sister lived in a filthy tenement build- 
ing, in one room of an extremely clean little flat 
owned by a family of their own nationality. 

Yeddie was a spirited, handsome girl of twenty- 
one, though rather worn looking and white.- At 
work for six years in New York, she had at first been a 
machine operative in a large pencil factory, where she 
fastened to the ends of the pencils the little corrugated 
tin bands to which erasers are attached. Then she 
had been a belt maker, then a stitcher on men’s 
collars, and during the last four years a white-goods 
worker. 

In the pencil factory of her first employment there 
was constant danger of catching her fingers in the 


SEASONAL FACTORY WORK 97 


machinery; the air was bad; the forewoman was 
harsh and nagging, and perpetually hurrying the 
workers. The jar of the wheels, the darkness, and 
the frequent illnesses of workers from breathing the 
particles of the pencil-wood shavings and the lead dust 
flying in the air all frightened and preyed upon her. 
She earned only $4 a week for nine and one-half 
hours’ work a day, and was exhausting herself when 
she left the place, hastened by the accident of a girl 
near her, who sustained hideous injuries from catching 
her hair in the machinery. 

In the collar factory she again earned $4 a week, 
stitching between five and six dozen collars a day. 
The stitch on men’s collars is extremely small, almost 
invisible. It strained her eyes so painfully that she 
was obliged to change her occupation again. 

As an operative on neckwear, and afterward on 
belts, she was thrown out of work by the trade seasons. 
These still leave her idle, in her present occupation 
as a white-goods worker, for more than three months 
in every year. 

In the remaining nine months, working with a one- 
needle machine on petticoats and wash dresses, in a 
small factory on the lower East Side, she has had em- 
ployment for about four days in the week for three 
months, employment for all the working days in the 
week for another three months, and employment with 


H 


98 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


overtime three nights in a week and an occasional half 
day on Sunday, for between two and three months. 
Legal holidays and a few days of illness made up the 
year. 

In full weeks her wage is $8. Her income for the 
year had been $366, and she had been able to save 
nothing. She had paid $208 for her board and lodging, 
at the rate of $4 a week; a little more than $100 for 
clothing ; $38 for carfare, necessitated by living in the 
Bronx; $3 for a doctor; $2.60 to a benefit association, 
which assures her $3 a week in case of illness; $5 for 
the theatre; and $6 for Union dues. 

Her work was very exhausting. Evenly spaced 
machine ruffling on petticoats is difficult, and she had 
a great deal of this work to do. She sewed with a 
one-needle machine, which carried, however, five 
cottons and was hard to thread. It may be said here 
that the number of needles does not necessarily de- 
termine the difficulty of working on sewing-machines ; 
two-needle machines are sometimes harder to run 
than five or even twelve-needle machines, because they 
are more cheaply and clumsily constructed and the 
material is held less firmly by the metal guide under 
the needle-point. It was not her eyes, Yeddie said, 
that were tired by the stitching, but her shoulders and 
her back, from the jar of the machines. Every month 
she suffered cruelly, but, because she needed every 


SEASONAL FACTORY WORK 99 


cent she made, she never remained at home, when the 
factory was open. , 

One of the most trying aspects of machine-speeding, 
in the sewing trades, is the perpetual goading and 
insistence of the foremen and forewomen, frequently 
mentioned by other workers besides Yeddie. Two 
years ago, in a waist and dress factory where 400 
operatives — more than 300 girls and about 20 men — 
were employed for the company by a well-known sub- 
contractor, Jake Klein, a foreman asked Mr. Klein to 
beset some of the girls for a degree of speed he said he 
was unwilling to demand. The manager discharged 
him. He asked to speak to the girls before he went 
away. The manager refused his request. As Mr. 
Klein turned to the girls, his superior summoned the 
elevator man, who seized Klein’s collar, overpowered 
him, and started to drag him over the floor toward the 
stairs. ‘“‘Brothers and sisters,’ Klein called to the 
operatives, “will you sit by and see a fellow-workman 
used like this?”’ In one impulse of clear justice, every 
worker arose, walked out of the shop with Jake Klein, 
and stayed out till the company made overtures of 
peace. This adventure, widely related on the East 
Side, serves to show the latent fire, kindled by the 
accumulation of small overbearing oppressions, which 
smolders in many sewing shops. 

The uncertainty of employment characterizing the 


I0O MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


sewing trades fell heavily on Sarah Silberman, a deli- 
cate little Austrian Jewish girl of seventeen, who fin- 
ished and felled women’s cloaks. 

She had always lived in poverty. She had worked 
in a stocking factory in Austria when she was a little 
thing of nine, and had been self-supporting ever since 
she was fourteen, machine-sewing in Vienna and 
London and New York. 

She had been in New York for about a year, lodg- 
ing, or rather sleeping at night, in the tenement kitchen 
of some distant cousins of hers, practically strangers. 
The kitchen opened on an air-shaft, and it was used, 
not only as a kitchen, but as a dining room and liv- 
ing-room. For the first four months after her arrival 
Sarah earned about $5 a week, working from nine and 
one-half to ten hours a day as a finisher of boys’ trous- 
ers. From this wage she paid $3 a week for her 
kitchen sleeping space and breakfast and supper. 
Luncheon cost her 7 cents a day. She had been 
able to buy so very little clothing that she had kept 
no account of it. She did her own washing, and 
walked to work. 

She had never had any education until she came to 
America, and she now attended a night school, in 
which she was keenly interested. She was living in 
this way when her factory closed. 

She then searched desperately for employment for 


SEASONAL FACTORY WORK IOI 


two weeks, finding it at last in a cloak factory ! where 
she was employed from half past seven in the morning 
until half past six or seven in the evening, with a 
respite of only a few minutes at noon for a hasty 
luncheon. Her wage was $3 a week. Working her 
hardest, she could not keep the wolf from the door, 
and was obliged to go hungry at luncheon time or fail 
to pay the full rent for her place to sleep in the kitchen. 

Sarah was very naturally unstrung and nervous in 

this hardness of circumstance and her terror of desti- 
tution. As she told her story, she sobbed and wrung 
her hands. In the next six months she had better 
occupation, however, in spasmodically busy shops, 
where the hours were shorter than in the cloak factory, 
and she managed to earn an average wage of $6 a 
week. She was then more serene; she said she had 
“made out good.” 
During her six weeks of better pay at $6 a week, 
however, which so few people would consider ‘“‘mak- 
ing out good,” she had suffered an especially mean 
exploitation. 

She applied at an underwear factory which con- 
stantly advertises, in an East Side Jewish paper, for 
operatives. The management told her they would 
teach her to operate if she would work for them two 


1 The income and outlay of other cloak makers will be separately 
presented. 


102 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


weeks for nothing and would give them a dollar. 
She gave them the dollar; but on the first day in the 
place, as she received no instructions, and learned 
through another worker that after her two weeks of 
work for nothing were over she would not be employed, 
she came away, losing the dollar she had given to the 
firm. 

Another worker who was distressed by the dull 
season, and had witnessed unjust impositions, was 
Katia Markelov, a young operative on corsets. She 
was a tiny, grave-looking girl of nineteen, very frail, 
with smooth black hair, a lovely refinement of manner, 
and a very sweet smile. Like many other operatives, 
she wore glasses. Katia was a good manager, and an 
industrious and clever student, a constant attendant at 
night school. 

In the factory where she was employed she earned 
about $10 a week as a week worker, a skilled worker 
making an entire corset, after it was cut and before 
it was trimmed. But she had only twelve full weeks’ 
work in the year; for two and a half months she was 
entirely idle, and for the remaining six and a half 
months she worked from two to five daysa week. Her 
income for the year had been about $346. 

Katia worked with a one-needle machine in a small 
factory off lower Broadway. Before that she had 
been employed as a week worker in a Fifth Avenue 


SEASONAL FACTORY WORK 103 


corset factory, which may be called Madame Cora’s. 
Shortly before Katia left this establishment, Madame 
Cora changed her basis of payment from week work 
to piece-work. The girls’ speed increased. Some of 
the more rapid workers who had before made $10 were 
able to make $12. On discovering this, Madame Cora 
cut their wages, not by frankly returning to the old 
basis, but by suddenly beginning to charge the girls 
for thread and needles. She made them pay her 2 
cents for every needle. Thread on a five-needle 
machine, sometimes with two eyes in each of the 
needles, stitches up very rapidly. The girls were 
frequently obliged to pay from a dollar and a half to 
two dollars a week for the thread sewed into Madame 
Cora’s corsets, and for needles. They rebelled when 
Madame Cora refused to pay for these materials her- 
self. From among the three hundred girls, thirty 
girls struck, went to Union headquarters, and asked to 
be organized. But Madame Cora simply filled their 
places with other girls who were willing to supply her 
with thread for her corsets, and refused to take them 
back. Katia did not respect Madame Cora’s methods, 
and had left before the strike. 

Katia spent $2.50 a week for breakfast and dinner 
and for her share of a room with a congenial friend, 
another Russian girl, in Harlem. The room was 
close and opened on an air-shaft, but was quiet and 


I04 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


rather pleasant. She paid from $1.25 to $1.50 for 
luncheons, and, out of the odd hundred dollars left 
from her income, had contrived, by doing her own 
washing and making her own waists, to buy all her 
clothing, and to spend $5 for books and magazines, 
$7 for grand opera, which she deeply loved, and $30 
for an outing. On account of her cleverness Katia 
was less at the mercy of unjust persons than some of 
the less skilful and younger girls. 

Among these, Molly Davousta, another young 
machine operative, was struggling to make payments 
to an extortionate ticket seller, who had swindled her 
in the purchase of a steamboat ticket. 

When Molly was thirteen, her mother and father, 
who had five younger children, had sent her abroad 
out of Russia, with the remarkable intention of having 
her prepare and provide a home for all of them in some 
other country. 

Like Dick Whittington, the little girl went to 
London, though to seek, not only her own fortune, 
but that of seven other people. After she had been 
in London for four years, her father died. She and 
her next younger sister, Bertha, working in Russia, 
became the sole support of the family; and now, 
learning that wages were better in America, Molly, 
like Whittington, turned again and came to New 
York. 


SEASONAL FACTORY WORK 105 


Here she found work on men’s coats, at a wage 
fluctuating from $5 to $9 a week. She lived in part 
of a tenement room for a rent of $3 a month. For 
supper and Saturday meals she paid $1.50 a week. 
Other food she bought from groceries and push carts, 
at a cost of about $2 a week. As she did her own 
washing, and walked to work, she had no other fixed 
expenses, except for shoes. Once in every two months 
these wore to pieces and she was forced to buy new 
ones; and, till she had saved enough to pay for them, 
she went without her push cart luncheon and break- 
fast. 

In this way she lived in New York for a year, dur- 
ing which time she managed to send $90 home, for 
the others. 

Her sister Bertha, next younger than herself, had 
then come to New York, and obtained work at sewing 
for a little less than $6 a week. Between them, in 
the following six months, the two girls managed to buy 
a passage ticket from Russia to New York for $42, 
and to send home $30. This, with the passage ticket 
and two other tickets, which they purchased on the 
instalment plan from a dealer, at a profit to him of 
$20, brought all the rest of the family into New York 
harbor — the girls’ mother, their three younger sisters 
of fifteen, fourteen, and eight, and a little brother of 
seven. 


106 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


Five months afterward Molly and Bertha were still 
making payments for these extortionate tickets. 

In New York, the sister of fifteen found employment 
in running ribbons into corset covers, earning from $1 
to $1.50a week. The fourteen-year-old girl was iearn- 
ing operating on waists. The family of seven lived 
in two rooms, paying for them $13.50 a month; their 
food cost $9 or $10 a week; shoes came to at least $1 
a week ; the girls made most of their own clothing, and 
for this purpose they were paying $1 a month for a 
sewing-machine; and they gave $1 a month for the 
little brother’s Hebrew schooling. 

Molly was seen in the course of a coat makers’ 
strike. She wept because the family’s rent was due 
and she had no means of paying it. She said she 
suffered from headache and from backache. Every 
month she lost a day’s work through illness. 

She was only nineteen years old. By working every 
hour she could make a fair wage, but, owing to the 
uncertain and spasmodic nature of the work, she was 
unable to depend upon earning enough to maintain 
even a fair standard of living. 

A point that should be accentuated in Molly Da- 
vousta’s account is the price of shoes. No one item of 
expense among working girls is more suggestive. 
The cost of shoes is unescapable. A girl may make 
over an old hat with a bit of ribbon or a flower, or 


SEASONAL FACTORY WORK 107 


make a new dress from a dollar’s worth of material, but 
for an ill-fitting, clumsy pair of shoes she must pay at 
least $2; and no sooner has she bought them than 
she must begin to skimp because in a month or six 
weeks she will need another pair. The hour or two 
hours’ walk each day through streets thickly spread, 
oftener than not, with a slimy, miry dampness liter- 
ally dissolves these shoes. Long after up-town streets 
are dry and clean, those of the congested quarters 
display the muddy travesty of snow in the city. The 
stockings inside these cheap shoes, with their worn 
linings, wear out even more quickly than the shoes. 
It is practically impossible to mend stockings besides 
walking to work, making one’s waists, and doing one’s 
washing. 

All Molly Davousta’s cares, her anxiety about 
shoes and her foreboding concerning seasonal work, 
were increased by her position of family responsibility. 

In the same way, in the course of her seasonal work, 
family responsibility pressed on Rita Karpovna. She 
was a girl of nineteen, who had come to America a few 
years before with her older brother, Nikolai. To- 
gether they were to earn their own living and make 
enough money to bring over their widowed mother, a 
little brother, and a sister a year or two younger 
than Rita. 

Soon after she arrived, she found employment in 


108 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


finishing men’s vests, at $6 or $7 a week, for ten hours’ 
work a day. Living and saving with her brother, 
she contrived to send home $4 a month. Between 
them, Nikolai and Rita brought over their mother 
and the little brother. But, very soon after they were 
all settled together, their mother died. They were 
obliged to put the little brother into an institution. 
Then Nikolai fell from a scaffolding and incapacitated 
himself, so that, after his partial recovery, his wage was 
sufficient only for his own support, near his work. 

Rita now lived alone, spending $3.50 a month for a 
sleeping place in a tenement, and for suppers $1.25 a 
week. Her luncheons and breakfasts, picked up 
anywhere at groceries or push carts, amounted, when 
she was working, to about 12 cents a day. At other 
times she often went without both meals. For in the 
last year her average wage had been reduced to $4.33 
a week by over four months and a half of almost com- 
plete idleness. Through nine weeks of this time she 
had an occasional day of work, and for nine weeks 
none at all. 

When she was working, she paid 60 cents a week 
carfare, 25 cents a month to the Union, of which she 
was an enthusiastic member, and 10 cents a month to a 
““Woman’s Self-Education Society.”” The Union and 
this club meant more to Rita than the breakfasts and 
luncheons she dispensed with, and more, apparently, 


SEASONAL FACTORY WORK 10g 


than dress, for which she had spent only $20 in a year 
and a half. 

Some months afterward, Mrs. Clark received word 
that Rita had solved many of her difficulties by a 
happy marriage, and could hope that many of her 
domestic anxieties were relieved. 

The chief of these, worry over the situation of her 
younger sister, still in Russia, had been enhanced by 
her observations of the unhappiness of a friend, another 
girl, working in the same shop — a tragedy told here 
because of its very serious bearing on the question of 
seasonal work. Rita’s younger sister was in somewhat 
the same position as this girl, alone, without physical 
strength for her work, and, indeed, so delicate that it 
was doubtful whether her admission to the United 
States could be secured, even if Rita could possibly 
save enough for her passage money. The friend in the 
shop, hard pressed by the dull season, had at last 
become the mistress of a man who supported her until 
the time of the birth of their child, when he left her 
resourceless. Slack and dull seasons in factory work 
must, of course, expose the women dependent on their 
wage-earning powers, most of them young and many 
of them with great beauty, to the greatest dangers 
and temptations.! Especially at the mercy of the 


1Jn the first report of the New York Probation Association the 
statement is made that out of 300 girls committed by the courts during 


I1o MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


seasons were some of the fur sewers, and the dress- 
makers, and milliners working, not independently, but 
in factories and workshops. 

Helena Hardman, an Austrian girl, a fur sewer, had 
been employed for only twenty weeks in the year. 
She sewed by hand on fur garments in a Twelfth 
Street shop, for $7 a week, working nine hours a day, 
with a Saturday half-holiday. The air and odors in the 
fur shop were very disagreeable, but had not affected 
her health. 

At the end of the twenty weeks she had been laid 
off, and had looked unsuccessfully for work for seven- 
teen weeks, before she found employment as an opera- 
tive in an apron factory. Here, however, in this 
unaccustomed industry, by working as an operative 
nine hours a day for five days a week, and six hours on 
Saturday, she could earn only $3 or $4. 

She paid $4 a week for board and a tenement room 


the year to the charge of Waverley House, 72 had been engaged in 
factory work. Of these many had been at one time or other em- 
ployed as operatives. On questioning the probation worker, Miss 
Stella Miner, who had lived with them and knew thcir stories most 
fully, it was learned, however, that almost every one of these girls 
had gone astray while they were little children, had been remanded 
by courts to the House of the Good Shepherd, where they had learned 
machine operating, and on going out of its protection to factories had 
drifted back again to their old ways of life. How far their early habit 
and experience had dragged these young girls in its undertow cannot 
of course, be known. The truth remains that factory work, when it 
is seasonal, must increase temptation by its economic pressure. 


SEASONAL FACTORY WORK IIt 


shared with another girl. She had been obliged to 
go in debt to her landlady for part of her long idle 
time, after her savings had been exhausted. 

During this time she had been unable to buy any 
clothing, though her expense for this before had been 
slender: a suit, $18; a hat, $3; shoes, $3; waists, $3 ; 
and underwear, $2.50. She looked very well, how- 
ever, in spite of the struggle and low wages necessi- 
tated by learning a secondary trade. 

The dull season is tided over in various ways. 
A few fortunate girls go home and live without expense. 
Many live partly at the expense of philanthropic per- 
sons, in subsidized homes. In these ways they save a 
little money for the dull time, and also store more 
energy from their more comfortable living. 

On the horizon of the milliner the dull season looms 
black. All the world wants a new hat, gets it, and 
thinks no more of hats or the makers of hats. On this 
account a fast and feverish making and trimming of 
hats, an exhausting drain of the energy of milliners 
for a few weeks, is followed by weeks of no demand 
upon their skill. 

Girl after girl told the investigator that the busy 
season more than wore her out, but that the worry and 
lower standard of living of the dull season were worse. 
The hardship is the greater because the skilled milliner 
has had to spend time and money for her training. 


II2 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


Many of these girls try to find supplementary 
work, as waitresses in summer hotels, or in some other 
trade. A great difficulty here is the overlapping of 
seasons. The summer hotel waitress is needed until 
September, at least, but the milliner must begin 
work in August. To obtain employment in a non- 
seasonal industry, it is often necessary to lie. In each 
new occupation it is necessary to accept a beginner’s 
wage. 

Regina Siegerson had come alone, at the age of 
fifteen, from Russia to New York, where she had been 
for seven years. The first winter was cruel. She 
supported herself on $3 a week. She had been forced 
to live in the most miserable of tenements with ‘‘ig- 
norant” people. She had subsisted mainly by eating 
bananas, and had worn a spring jacket through the 
cold winter. It seemed, however, that no hardship 
had ever prevented her from attending evening school, 
where her persistence had taken her to the fourth year 
of high school. She was thinking of college at the 
time of the interview. Regina was a Russian revo- 
lutionist, and keenly thirsting for knowledge. She 
talked eagerly to the inquirer about Victor Hugo, 
Gorky, Tolstoy, and Bernard Shaw. With no less . 
interest she spoke of the trade fortunes of milliners in 
New York, and her own last year’s experience. She 
had worked through May, June, and July as a trimmer, 


SEASONAL FACTORY WORK 113 


making $11 in a week of nine hours a day, with Satur- 
day closing at five. During August and September 
and the first weeks in October she had only six weeks’ 
work, as a maker in a ready-to-wear hat factory, 
situated on the lower West Side over a stable, where 
she made $10 in a week of nine hours a day. 

Regina and a girl friend had managed to furnish a 
two-room tenement apartment with very simple con- 
veniences, and there they kept house. Rent was 
$10.50 a month; gas for heating and cooking, $1.80; 
and food for the two, about $5 a week. As Regina 
did her own washing, the weekly expense for each was 
but $3.67, less than many lodgers pay for very much 
less comfort. 

The greatest pleasure the girls had in their little 
establishment was the opportunity it gave them for 
entertaining friends. Before, it had been impossible 
for them to see any one, except in other people’s 
crowded living-rooms, or on the street. 

Regina was engaged to a young apothecary stu- 
dent, whom she expected to marry in the spring. 
Like her, he was in New York without his family, 
and he took his meals at the two girls’ little flat 
with them. 

Regina’s father, who was living in Russia with 
a second wife, had sent her $100 when she wrote him 
of her intended marriage. This, and about $40 saved 

I 


II4 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


in the six weeks of earning $10, were her reserve fund 
in the long dull season. 

The inquirer saw Regina again a few days before 
Thanksgiving. She was still out of work, but was 
learning at home to do some mechanical china decorat- 
ing for the Christmas trade. 

Among the milliners, several girls were studying 
to acquire, not only a training in a secondary trade, 
but the better general education which Frances 
Ashton, a young American girl of twenty, had ob- 
tained through better fortunes. 

Her father, a professional man, had been com- 
fortably situated. Without anticipating the neces- 
sity of supporting herself, she had studied millinery 
at Pratt Institute for half a year. Then, because it 
was rather a lark, she had gone to work in New 
York. Most of her wage was spent for board and 
recreation, her father sending her an allowance for 
clothes. 

After a year, his sudden death made it necessary 
for her to live more economically, as her inheritance 
was not large. ‘The expenses of an attack of typhoid 
one summer, and of an operation the next year, en- 
tirely consumed it. 

In the year she described, she had been a copyist 
in one of the most exclusive shops on Fifth Avenue. 
The woman in charge was exceptionally considerate, 


SEASONAL FACTORY WORK 115 


keeping the girls as long as possible. She used to 
weep when she was obliged to dismiss them, for she 
realized the suffering and the temptation of the long 
idle period. 

However, the season had lasted only three or three 
and a half months at a time, from February 1 to 
May 15, and from August 18 to December 4. During 
the six busy weeks in the spring and the autumn, while 
the orders were piling up, work was carried on with 
feverish intensity. The working day lasted from 
eight-thirty until six, with an hour at noon for lunch- 
eon. Many employees, however, stayed until nine 
o’clock, receiving $1, besides 30 cents supper money, 
for overtime. But by six o’clock Frances was so 
exhausted that she could do no more, and she always 
went home at that hour. 

In addition to her thirty weeks in the Fifth Avenue 
order establishment, Frances had two weeks’ work 
in a wholesale house, where the season began earlier ; 
so that she had been employed for thirty-two weeks in 
the year, and idle for twenty. She was a piece-worker 
and she had earned from $8 to $14 a week. 

The twenty idle weeks had been filled with con- 
tinuous futile attempts to find anything to do. Ap- 
plication at department stores had been ineffectual, 
so had answered advertisements. She said she had 
lost all scruples about lying, because, the moment 


116 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


it was known that she wanted a place during the dull 
season only, she had no chance at all. 

Frances lived in one of the pleasantest and most 
expensive subsidized homes for working girls, paying 
for board, and a large, delightful room shared with 
two other girls, $4.50 a week. Although she walked 
sometimes from work, carfare usually amounted to 50 
cents a week. Laundering two sets of underwear 
and one white waist a week cost 60 cents. Thus, for 
a reasonable degree of cleanliness and comfort, partly 
provided by philanthropic persons, she spent $5.60 a 
week aside from the cost of clothing. 

She dressed plainly, though everything she had 
was of nice quality. She said she could spend noth- 
ing for pleasure, because of her constant foreboding 
of the dull season, and the necessity of always saving 
for her apparently inevitable weeks of idleness. She 
was, at the time she gave her account, extremely 
anxious because she did not know how she was to pay 
another week’s board. 

Yet she had excellent training and skill, the advan- 
tage of living comfortably and being well nourished, 
and the advantage of a considerate employer, who did 
as well as she could for her workers, under the cir- 
cumstances. 

Something, then, must be said about these circum- 
stances — this widespread precariousness in work, 


SEASONAL FACTORY WORK II7 


against which no amount of thrift or industriousness 
or foresight can adequately provide. Where indus- 
try acts the part of the grasshopper in the fable, it is 
clearly quite hopeless for workers to attempt to attain 
the history of the ant. Among the factory workers, 
the waist makers’ admirable efforts for juster wages 
were, as far as yearly income was concerned, largely 
ineffectual, on account of this obstacle of slack and 
dull seasons, whose occurrence employers are as power- 
less as employees to forestall. 

These chronicles, showing the effect of seasonal work 
on the fortunes of some self-supporting operatives and 
hand workers in New York factories and workshops, 
concern only one corner of American industry, in 
which, as every observer must realize, there are many 
other enormous fields of seasonal work. These his- 
tories are nevertheless clear and authentic instances of 
a strange and widespread social waste. Neither trade 
organization nor State legislation for shorter hours is 
primarily directed toward a more general regular and 
foresighted distribution of work among all seasonal 
trades and all seasonal workers. Until some focussed, 
specific attempt is made to secure such a distribution, 
it seems impossible but that extreme seasonal want, 
from seasonal idleness, will be combined with exhaust- 
ing seasonal work from overtime or exhausting seasonal 
work in speeding, in a manner apparently arranged by 


118 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


fortune to devastate human energy in the least in- 
telligent manner possible. 

Further effects of speeding and of monotony in this 
labor were described by other self-supporting factory 
workers whose chronicles, being also concerned with 
industry in mechanical establishments, will be placed 
next. 


libRary 
THE 
Linas 


UNIVERS Fy 


(i 


Photograph by Lewis Hine 


“Tnquiring , tireless, seeking what is yet unfound ; — 
But where is what I started for so long ago, 
And why is it still unfound ?”’ 


— WALT WHITMAN. 





CHAPTER IV 


THE INCOME AND OUTLAY OF SOME NEW YORK 
FACTORY-WORKERS 


[Monotony and Fatigue in Speeding] 


ONE of the strangest effects of the introduction of 
machinery into industry is that instead of liberating 
the human powers and initiative of workers from 
mechanical drudgery, it has often tended to devi- 
talize and warp these forces to the functions of 
machines.1 


1 These testimonies are cited from the brief for the Illinois Ten- 
Hour Law, prepared by Louis D. Brandeis and Josephine Goldmark. 

Investigations into the Conditions of Health of the Swiss Factory 
Workers. Dr. Fridlion Schuler, Swiss Factory Inspector, and Dr. 
A. E. Burckhardt, Professor of Hygiene. 

“ Instead of becoming wearied by personal labor, as in earlier stages 
of industry, it is to-day the unremitting, tense concentration of 
watching the machine, the necessary rapidity of motion, that fatigues 
the worker.” 

Dangerous Trades. Thomas Oliver, M.A., M.D., F.R.C.P. Lon- 
don. 1902. 

“The introduction of steam has revolutionized industry. .. . 
While machinery has, in some senses, lightened the burden of human 
toil it has not diminished fatigue in man. While the machinery 
pursues its relentless course, and insensitive to fatigue, human beings 
are conscious, especially towards the end of the day, that the com- 
petition is unequal, for their muscles are becoming tired and their 


119 


I20 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


This stupefying and wearying effect of machine-work 
from concentration and intensity of application and 
attention was frequently mentioned by the factory 
workers in their accounts. 

Tina Levin, a young girl eighteen years old, had 
worked two years in an underwear factory in New 
York; and before her arrival in America, six years in 
an underwear factory in Russia. She had come from 
abroad to her fiancé, Ivan Levin, whom she had re- 
cently married. She still worked in the underwear 
factory, although she was not entirely self-supporting. 
She and her young husband met the League’s In- 
quirer at a Jewish Girls’ Self-Education Club, where 


brains jaded. Present-day factory labor is too much a competition 
of sensitive human nerve and muscle against insensitive iron.” 

Fourteenth International Congress of Hygiene and Demography, 
Berlin, September, 1907. Fatigue Resulting from Occupation. Dr. 
Emil Roth, Regierungsrat, Potsdam. 

“With the progressive division of labor, work has become more 
and more mechanical. A definite share of overfatigue and its sequels, 
especially neurasthenia, must be ascribed to this monotony — to the 
absence of spontaneity or joy in work.” 

Proceedings of the First International Convention on Indusirial 
Diseases, Milan, 1906. Imbecility and Criminality in Relation to 
Certain Forms of Labor. Professor Crisafuli. 

“When only one brain-centre works, it becomes overfatigued much 
more easily than if the functions were alternately performed by the 
various centres. 

“ Here, then, is another factor in overfatigue due to the monotony 
of work, interrupted only at long intervals. 

“‘ This monotony is the determining cause of local disturbances and 
endangers the entire organism.” 


MACHINAL ACTIVITY I2I 


they gave between them the account of Tina’s self- 
supporting years. 

Before her marriage, Tina had worked at a machine 
ten hours a day for an underwear manufacturer on 
Canal Street. In the height of the season the shop 
often worked overtime until 8 o’clock, two or three 
nights a week. Besides this, many of the girls took 
hand work home, where they sewed till eleven or 
twelve o’clock. But Tina was so exhausted by her 
long day that she never did this. Working as hard 
as possible, she earned $7, and sometimes $8 a week, 
during the six busy months. 

For part of this time she lived a full hour-and-a- 
half’s car ride from the factory. So that with dressing, 
and eating two meals at her lodging, when she was at 
the machine twelve hours a day, she had only about 
six hours sleep. 

At least half the year was so dull that she could 
earn only $3 or $3.50 a week; and she was so worn 
out that every month she was utterly unable to work 
for three or four days. This loss had reduced her 
income by $32. She had been obliged to pay $9 
for medicine. Her income for the year had been about 
$262. For board and lodging in a tenement she had 
paid $3.50 a week; for carfare 60 cents a week; and 
she had sent $5 home in the year; and given $9 
for medicine; $36 for the dentist; and $1 a month 


I22 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


to the Jewish Girls’ Self-Education Society. She 
had less than $10 left for dress for the year. But her 
lover had helped her with many presents; and had 
given her many good times and pleasures, besides those 
obtainable at the Jewish Girls’ Self-Education Society. 

Tina had the advantage of a knowledge of English. 
This lack of opportunity to learn the tongue of the 
country in which she lived was poignantly regretted 
by another machine operative, Fanny Leysher, a white- 
goods operative of twenty-one who had been in Amer- 
ica four years. She lived in one room of a tenement 
off the Bowery, where she boarded and lodged for $4 
a week. She worked in a factory within walking 
distance, earning $7 a week in the busy season. 

Fanny was a pretty, fair girl, with a graceful pres- 
ence, a wistful smile, and the charm peculiar to blond 
Russians with long gray eyes. She looked, however, 
painfully frail and white. In the factory she had 
worked for four years, first at time work, then at 
piece-work. She could earn $7 a week by stitching 
up and down the fronts and stitching on the belts of 
108 corset covers—g dozen a day. This was the 
most she could possibly complete. The unremitting 
speeding and close attention this amount ‘of stitching 
required left her too exhausted at six o’clock to be 
able to attend night school, or to learn English. She 
suffered greatly from headache and from backache. 


MACHINAL ACTIVITY 123 


Fanny worked in this way for forty-one weeks of the 
year. For six weeks she worked three days in the 
week. For two weeks the factory closed. For three 
weeks she had been ill. 

She was a girl of quick nervous intelligence, eager 
for life and with a nice sense of quality. When she 
talked of her inability to go to night school because of 
her frailness and weariness, tears flooded her eyes. 
Her room was very nicely kept, and she had on a shelf 
a novel of Sudermann’s and a little book of Rosen- 
thal’s sweat shop verses. Everything she wore was 
put on carefully and with good taste. Her dress 
showed the quickest adaptability, and in correctness, 
and simplicity of line and color might have belonged 
to a college freshman “with every advantage.” It 
was a little trim delft-blue linen frock with a white 
piqué collar and a loose blue tie. She had tan stock- 
ings and low russet shoes. Fanny belonged to the 
Working-man’s Circle. She said she went as often 
as she could possibly afford it to the theatre. And 
when she was asked what plays she liked, she replied 
with an unforgettable keenness and eagerness, ‘‘Oh, 
I want nothing but the best. Only what will tell me 
about real life.” 

She said she had spent too much money for dress 
last year; but she had been able to buy clothing of a 
quality which she thought would last her for a long 


I24. MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


time. The little plain gold watch in her list she had 
partly needed and partly had been unable to resist. 
One of the three summer dresses costing $14 was 
her blue linen dress, for which she had given $7. 
She expected to wear it for two summers with altera- 


tions. 
Last year’s sult cleaned) ur ee is ty Nye 
hte SOM aU Mra Ue ee my Rete YL NG 
BRAG ica Naa ta chine aL Ie so NRA Raed Sy UE dae) 
Dresses (1 winter, $10; 3 summer, $14) . . . . . 24 
Go EADIE NTs Shih rd ON Bie dh PES a OURS cone wads 3 9 
Every-day hat . . .. ‘ 4.50 
Muslin (for white waists cat corset covers mente be We 

self) . 5 
Umbrella 2 
Gloves 2 
Pocket-book Sa ke a the Soee Nig ig ai I 
WRG ee ee Ue SA gine fg Neg 

$82.50 


Painful as it was in some ways to see Fanny Leysher, 
who liked ‘‘nothing but the best,’’ pouring her life 
force into stitching 108 corset covers a day, she yet 
seemed less helpless than some still younger workers. 

Minna Waldemar, a girl of sixteen, an operative 
in an umbrella factory, had been in the United States 
for six months. For five months of this time she had 
been stitching the seams and hems of umbrella covers 
for 35 cents a hundred. Her usual output was about 
200 a day. By working very fast, she could in a full 


MACHINAL ACTIVITY 125 


day make 300, but when she did, it left her thumb very 
sore. . 

Minna paid $3 a month for sleeping space in a 
tenement; $1.75 a week for suppers; and for break- 
fasts and luncheons, from 15 to 30 cents a day. 

She wore a black sateen waist, which had cost $1. 
A suit had cost $8; a hat, $3; and a pair of shoes, 
$2. Working her hardest and fastest, she had not 
received enough money to pay for even these meagre 
belongings, and was obliged to have assistance from 
her brother, her only relative in New York. 

Every line of Minna’s little figure looked overworked. 
This was true, too, of Sadie, a little underfed, grayish 
Austrian girl of seventeen, who had come to New York 
as the advance guard of her family. 

In the last year since her arrival, two and one-half 
years before, she had first been employed for seven 
months in a neckwear factory, where she earned from 
$2.50 a week to $6 and $7 on piece-work. In two 
very busy weeks she had earned $9 a week. 

After the slack season, the factory closed. Hunt- 
ing desperately for a way to make money, Sadie found 
employment as an operative on children’s dresses, 
running a foot-power machine in a tenement work- 
room for $2.50 a week. In the second week her wage 
was advanced to $3 and continued at this for the 
next three or four months. 


126 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


After this, the demand for neckwear had increased 
again. She had returned to the neckwear factory, 
and was earning $6 a week. Her busiest days were 
eleven hours long, and her others nine. 

She spent nothing for pleasure. She could send 
nothing to her family. In the course of two years 
and a half she had bought one hat for $3 and a suit 
for $12. She went to night school, but was gener- 
ally so weary that she could learn really nothing. She 
did her own washing, and for $3 a month she rented 
a sleeping space in the kitchen of a squalid, crowded 
East Side tenement. It was the living-room of her 
poverty-stricken landlady’s family; and she had to 
wait until they all left it, sometimes late at night, 
before she dragged her bed out of an obscure corner 
and flung it on the floor for her long-desired sleep. 
Supper with the landlady cost her 20 cents a night. 
Sadie’s breakfasts and dinners depended absolutely 
upon her income and her other expenses. As in the 
weeks when she was earning $3 she had only go 
cents for fourteen meals a week and her clothing, 
and in the weeks when she earned $2.50, only 40 cents 
a week for fourteen meals and her clothing, her de- 
pleted health is easily understood. 

Sadie’s custom of paying rent and yet dragging a 
pallet out of the corner and finding or waiting for a 
place to throw it in, like a little vagrant, is very charac- 


PAYING FOR A CHANCE 127 


teristic of East Side tenements. She paid $36 a year 
for lodging, and yet can scarcely be said to have 
received for this sum any definite space at all under a 
roof-tree, honestly provided for her as her own, but 
simply the chance of getting sucha place when she could. 

If she had attempted to find a better and less expen- 
sive place for sleeping, in a less congested quarter of 
the city, she-would have been obliged to pay, besides 
her rent, a sum at least half as large, for transporta- 
tion. In the same way, for this really very large sum 
of $15 or $20 paid yearly to the city railroads, 
she would not have received in their cars any definite 
place at all, honestly provided for her as her own, but 
simply a chance of getting a foothold when she could 
on a cross-town car or the Bronx elevated during the 
rush hours. The yearly sums paid to the car com- 
panies by factory workers too exhausted to walk home 
are very striking in these budgets. Tina Levin had 
paid nearly $30— more than she had spent for her 
clothing during the year. This expense of carfare and 
the wretched conditions in transportation which most 
of the car companies supply to the workers compelled 
to use their lines in rush hours is a difficulty scarcely 
less than that of New York rents and congestion, and 
inseparably connected with them. 

Anna Flodin, a girl of eighteen, forced by illness to 
leave the congested quarters of New York for the 


128 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


Bronx, did not attempt to return to work until she 
was able to live again within walking distance of the 
factory. 

Anna Flodin was a pale, quiet girl with smooth 
black hair and a serious, almost poignant expression. 
All her life had been one of poverty, a sheer struggle 
to keep the wolf from the door. She spoke no English, 
though she could understand a little. 

She stitched regularly in the busy season 1568 
yards of machine sewing daily in fastening belts to 
cheap corset covers. The forewoman gave her in the 
course of the day 28 bundles, each containing 28 
corset covers with the belts basted to the waist lines 
and the loose ends of the belts basted ready to finish. 

The instant Anna failed to complete this amount, or 
seemed to drop behind in the course of the day, the 
forewoman blamed her, and threatened to reduce her 
wage. 

Anna worked in this manner ten hours a day, for 
$6 a week. If she were five minutes late, she was 
docked for half an hour. She was docked for every 
needle she broke in the rapid pace she was obliged to 
keep, and in the first year she was obliged to pay out 
of her wage, which had then been only $5 a week, 
for all the many hundred yards of thread she stitched 
into the white-goods company’s output. 

In order to complete 784 yards of belting a day — 


MACHINAL ACTIVITY 129 


over 1600 yards of stitching, for she fastened both edges 
of the belt — she was forced, of course, to work as fast 
as she could feed and guide belts under the needle. 
She had strong eyes. But her back ached from 
the stooping to guide the material, and she suffered 
cruelly from pain in her shoulders. 

There had been seventeen weeks of this work. Then 
there had been ten weeks of two or three days’ work a 
week, when it seemed impossible to earn enough to 
live on. Then, ten weeks when the factory closed. 
Then she had an illness lasting over two months, 
which began a few weeks after the factory closed. 

She said the doctor had told her that her illness was 
consumption and that he had cured it. It must have 
been, of course, not consumption or not arrested in 
that space of time. But, during it, she had paid him 
$28.50 and given $22.50 for her board and lodging, 
with an uncle in the Bronx, and for milk and eggs. 

Almost as soon as she was declared able to return 
to stitching seven hundred belts a day, she hurried 
back to work. But within a few days the girls struck 
against the company’s practice of making them buy 
thread, and were out for five weeks. At the end of 
this time they won their point. 

Altogether her income for the year had been about 
$150; and the severity and amount of labor she had 
given in earning it had left her cruelly spent. 


K 


130 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


She could not possibly live on this amount, as board 
and lodging alone had cost her $3 a week — $126 
for the year. She had been obliged to borrow $50 
for her treatment in her illness; and she had not yet 
paid back this sum. Besides, her landlady had 
trusted her for some board bills she had not yet paid. 
For clothing she had spent $26.59, — one dress for 
$7; one hat for $2; one jacket for $6; two pairs 
of shoes at $2; a pair for $4; 36 pairs of stockings 
at 10 cents a pair for $3.60; three waists at 98 
cents each for $2.94; and three suits of winter under- 
wear for $1.05. But she said winter underwear of 
this quality failed to keep her really warm. 

In the evening she was too tired to leave the tene- 
ment for night school or for anything else. She did 
her own washing. In the course of a year her only 
pleasure had been a trip to the theatre for 35 cents. 

Anna Flodin lived in a very poor tenement off the 
Bowery; and she told her experiences in her work, in 
spite of her muteness and struggle to express herself, 
with a sort of public spirit, and an almost ambassa- 
dorial dignity, which was inexpressibly touching. 

That spirit—a fine freedom from personal self- 
consciousness and clear interest in testifying to the 
truth about women’s work, and wages, and expenditure 
of strength — was evinced by countless girls. None, 
indeed, were pressed for any facts they did not wish 


MACHINAL ACTIVITY I31 


to give, nor sought, unless they wished to help in the 
inquiry. But perhaps because it arose from such an 
immured depth of youth spent in foreboding poverty, 
the voice of Anna Flodin’s chronicle was distinctively 
thrilling. 

She told her experience in her work with great clear- 
ness, sitting in a little dark, clean room in a tenement, 
looking out on a filthy, ill-smelling inner court. The 
only brightening of her grave, young face throughout 
her story and our questions was her smile when she 
spoke of her one visit to the theatre, and another 
change of expression when she spoke of the other girls 
in the shop, in connection with the strike about thread. 
She was a member of the Union. In the shop there 
were girls not members who were willing to continue 
to buy the management’s thread indefinitely. Anna 
Flodin said quietly, with a look of quick scorn, that 
she would never have anything to do with such girls. 

Her mute life and mechanical days could make one 
understand in her with every sympathy all kinds of 
unreasoning prejudices and aversions. 

She was very young; and it was partly her youth 
which deepened all the sense of dumb oppression and 
exhaustion her still presence and appealing eyes im- 
parted. There is a great deal of talk about the danger 
and sadness of dissipation in youth. Too little is said 
of the fact that such an enclosing monotony and stark 


132 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


poverty of existence as Anna Flodin’s is in youth sad- © 
ness itself, as cruel to the pulses in its numb passage as 
the painful sense of wreck. All tragedies are not those 
of violence, but of depletion, too, and of starvation. 

The drain and exhaustion experienced after a day 
of speeding at a machine was described by another 
worker, a girl of good health and lively mind, who after- 
wards found more attractive employment. She said 
that in her factory days she used to walk home, a dis- 
tance of a mile, at nine o’clock, after her work was done, 
with a cousin. The cousin was another clever and 
spirited Russian girl of the same age. They had a 
hundred things to talk about, but as they left the 
factory, one would almost always say to the other: 
‘‘ Pleasedo not speak tome on my way home. Iam so 
tired I can scarcely answer.” Instantly after supper 
they went to bed. In the morning they hurried 
through breakfast to be at the factory at eight, to go 
through the round of the day before. 

‘We only went from bed to work, and from work to 
bed again,” one of the girls said, ‘‘and sometimes if we 
sat up a little while at home, we were so tired we could 
not speak to the rest, and we hardly knew what they 
were talking about. And still, although there was 
nothing for us but bed and machine, we could not 
earn enough to take care of ourselves through the 
slack season.’ 


MACHINAL ACTIVITY 133 


It is significant to compare with the account of 
these ill-paid operatives, exhausted from speeding, 
the chronicle of a skilled worker in a belt-factory, 
Theresa Luther, earning $17 a week. 

She was a young German-American Protestant 
woman of 27, born in New York. After her father 
died, she instantly helped her older brother shoulder 
the support of the family, as readily as though she had 
been a capable and adventurous boy. Strong, com- 
petent, and high-spirited, Miss Luther was a tall 
girl, fair-haired, with dark blue eyes, and a very 
beautiful direct glance. 

Her father had been a wood-carver, an artist re- 
sponsible for some of the most interesting work in his 
craft done in New York. Theresa, too, had dexter- 
ity with her hands. At the age of fifteen she entered 
a leather belt factory as a ‘“‘trimmer.’”’ She was so 
quick that she earned almost immediately $7 a week, 
a remarkable wage for a beginner of fifteen. ‘Soon she 
was permitted to fold and pack. Not long after- 
wards, overhearing a forewoman lamenting the ab- 
sence of machine operatives, she observed that she 
could run a sewing-machine at home. The fore- 
woman, amused, placed her at the machine. After 
that she had stitched belts for eleven years, though 
not in the same factory. 

Leather belt stitching is at once heavy and skilled 


134. MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


work. The row of stitching is placed at the very edge 
of the belt. The slightest deviation from a straight 
line in the stitch spoils the entire piece of work. 
Running the needle-point through the leather is hard, 
and requires so much strength that the stitching 
through the doubled leather, necessitated by putting 
on the buckle, can be performed only by men. 
Theresa used to complete two gross of belts a day. 
She and other Americans in the factory were hard- 
pressed by some Russian girls, who could finish in a 
day four gross of very badly sewed belts with enormous 
stitches and loose threads. When the forewoman 
blamed Theresa for finishing less work than these 
girls, she freely expressed her contempt for their 
slovenly belts. She had a strong handicraft pride, 
and it was pleasant to see her instinctive scorn in 
quoting the forewoman’s reply that “‘None of them 
(the badly made belts) ever came back’’ — as though 
their selling quality were the one test of their work- 
manship. 

She had left the factory because of a complete 
breakdown from long hours of overwork. In one 
winter she had been at the machine seventy-one hours 
a week for ten weeks. After this severe experience, 
she had a long prostration and was depleted, exhausted, 
in a sort of physical torpor in which she was unable to 
do anything for months. 


MACHINAL ACTIVITY 135 


On her recovery she entered another factory, where 
the hours are not so excessive, the treatment is fair, 
and she has now an excellent position as forewoman at 
$18 a week. 

Theresa was a very earnest, clear-minded girl, with 
strong convictions concerning the bad effect of ex- 
cessive hours for working women. At the time when 
the hearing on the New York State Labor Law was 
held at Albany last spring, she had been active in 
obtaining a petition, signed by a body of New York 
working girls and placed in the hands of Labor 
Commissioner Williams, to aid in securing a shorten- 
ing of their present legal hours. Theresa had ad- 
vanced beyond the drudgery of her trade to one of its 
better positions by extraordinary ability. Some of the 
skilled machine operatives, like some of the unskilled 
factory workers, were buoyed through the monotony 
of their present calling by the hope of leaving it for 
another occupation. 

Alta Semenova, a Polish glove maker, twenty years 
old, worked nine hours a day at a machine for $7 a 
week, and studied five evenings a week in a private 
evening school, for which she paid $4 a month tuition. 

She lived in a small hall bedroom with an admired 
girl friend. Each paid $4.25 a month rent. Her 
food amounted to $2.90 a week. Saturday evening 
she spent in doing her washing. She lived near enough 


136 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


to the factory to walk to work in five or ten minutes. 
She paid 25 cents a month for Union dues. 

Alta was working for “‘counts” toward entering 
college or Cooper Union. In spare moments she read 
the modern Russians. During her year in New York 
she has mastered sufficient English to read Shakespeare 
in the original. In a few years she will be a teacher. 
Alta was an eager Russian revolutionist. She had 
the student’s passion, and her head was full of plans 
for a life of intellectual work. 

These chronicles of the income and outlay of some 
New York factory workers have described monotony 
and speeding in machine-work. The annals of the 
New York factory workers presented below describe 
monotony and speeding in hand-work. 

Yetta Sigurdin, an Austrian girl nineteen years old, 
had been in New York three years, and in the last 
year and a half had been employed in a tobacco fac- 
tory, a Union shop, as a skilled roller, on piece-work. 

Her hours were eight a day. In a full day, Yetta 
could roll 2200 cigarettes. So her best wage was about 
$12 a week. The average was, however, not more 
than $8, as the factory had been idle four weeks, 
and very dull for five months, though busy for the 
remaining six. 

Yetta looked very robust and happy. She seemed 
comfortable in her work and with her income, in spite 


SKILLED HAND-WORK 137 


of the extra labor of washing some of her own clothes and 
making her own waists. This, no doubt, was due 
largely to her sane and reasonable working hours, and 
partly to the fact that her work did not require the 
intensity of watching and application demanded by 
rapid machine-work. Indeed in some Union tobacco 
factories the rollers sometimes make up a sum among 
themselves to pay a reader by the hour to read aloud 
to them while they are at work. 

Yetta paid $3 a week for room, breakfast, and 
supper in a tenement. It was in an extremely poor 
neighborhood, but was fresh, pleasant, and well 
aired. Her dinners cost about $1.50 a week. She 
did part of her washing and part was included in the 
charge for board. Her Union fee was 15 cents a week. 
The members of the Cigarette Makers’ Union pay a 
weekly due of 5 cents for the support of a sanatorium 
in Colorado for tubercular tobacco workers. Yetta 
contributed to this sanatorium and gave a ro-cent 
monthly fee for Union agitation. 

She estimated the cost of her clothing at about $82 
for the year. A winter suit cost $14; a spring suit, 
$15; a summer dress, $5; and a winter dress, $18. 
Six pairs of shoes cost $15. She could not remember 
the items of the rest of her expenditure for dress. 
Part of it was for underwear and part of it for 
material for waists she had made herself. 


138 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


In spite of the monotony and speed of Yetta’s work, 
it did not exhaust her powers of living, because it 
neither required intense application nor was pursued 
beyond a reasonable number of hours. 

Barbara Cotton, an American woman of thirty-two, 
a skilled hand-worker in an electrical goods factory, 
had been self-supporting for more than eighteen 
years, spending the last nine in her present em- 
ployment. 

In the electrical goods factory she separated layers 
of mica until it was split into the thinnest possible 
sheets. She was paid by the number she succeeded 
in splitting. The constant repetition of an act of 
such accuracy for nine hours a day had strained her 
eyes excessively and made her extremely nervous. 

For six months of these nine-hour days, she earned 
$8 or $8.50 a week. During the other six months 
there was no work on Saturdays, and she earned about 
$7 a week. She had a week’s vacation with pay. 
She had lost during the year she described two months’ 
work from illness, due to her run-down condition. 
This she said, however, was not caused by her work, 
but by combining with it, in an emergency, the care of 
the children of a sister, who had been sick. 

Miss Cotton belonged to a benefit society and 
through her own illness she had received an allowance 
of $5 a week. 


SKILLED HAND-WORK 139 


Her income for the year had been about $367, an 
average of $7.06 a week. 

Miss Cotton had tried living in boarding-houses and 
furnished rooms, and although the expense was about 
the same, the places were much less attractive in every 
way than the hotel for working girls where she was 
staying at the time of the interview. 

For half of a room a little larger than an ordinary 
hall bedroom and for breakfasts and dinners, she paid 
$4.50 a week. Luncheons in addition cost her $1 
a week. As she was within walking distance of work, 
she had no other expense but 35 cents for part of her 
washing. ‘The rest she did herself. 

She bought very little clothing, as out of the $1.15 a 
week she had left after paying every necessary ex- 
pense, she generously helped to support a sick sister 
and niece. After eighteen years of hard, steady work 
— nine years of it skilled work — she had saved noth- 
ing except in the form of benefit fees, and she had no 
prospect of saving. 

Although she was nervously worn, and her eyesight 
was strained, she was less exhausted by her industrial 
experience than Katherine Ryan, an Irish worker of 
forty-five, who had been cutting and sewing trim- 
mings for six years in an appliqué factory. 

Eight and a quarter hours of this work a day ex- 
hausted her. She received $7 a week. Her eyes 


140 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


were fast failing her from the close watch she had to 
keep on her scissors to guard against cutting too far. 

She often went to bed at eight or half past eight 
o’clock, worn out by one day’s task and eager to be 
fresh for the next, for she was hard pressed by the com- 
petition of young eyes and quick fingers. 

Newer workers were given finer and more profit- 
able work to do. In spite of her faithfulness, and 
straining for speed, she was laid off two months earlier 
in the last season than in any previous year, and 
newer helpers were retained. She thought the fore- 
woman was prejudiced against her, and naturally 
could not understand the truth that from the stand- 
point of modern industry she was aged at forty-five. | 

She had been paying $3 a week for board in a 
philanthropic home, and there she was permitted to 
stay and to pay for her board and lodging when she 
had no money by helping with the housework. Miss 
Ryan, however, had exhausted herself less rapidly 
than Elena and Gerda Nakov, two young Polish 
women of thirty-three and twenty-nine, skilled hand- 
workers on children’s dresses. 

Elena had come from South Russia to seek her for- 
tunes when she was sixteen years old. Her mother 
and father were dead. She had been educated by an 
uncle, with whom her younger sister, Gerda, remained. 

According to the testimony of Elena’s brother-in- 


FINE HAND-SEWING I4l 


law, the kind-hearted husband of a married sister 
living in New York, and also according to the 
testimony of Gerda, Elena at sixteen was a very 
beautiful girl. She was small, but very strong and 
well knit, with a fresh, glowing color, deep gray eyes, 
and heavy reddish gold hair, growing low upon her 
forehead in a widow’s peak. 

Elena first found work as a cigarette roller, earning 
$4 a week. Here she was subjected to constant 
insolence and scurrilous language from the foreman 
and the men working with her. Her eyes turned 
black with contempt when she spoke of this offence — 
“Oh,” she exclaimed, ‘‘I thought, ‘I am poor, but 
I will never in my life be so poor as to stand things like 
that.’” 

She left the tobacco factory and found employment 
as a neckwear worker. Here, too, she earned $4, 
but the season grew dull, and she entered a small 
factory, where she worked on children’s dresses, 
embroidering, buttonholing, faggoting, and feather- 
stitching. In this craft she proved to have such 
deftness, nicety of touch, and speed that she could do 
in an hour twice as much as most of the other girls 
and women in the factory. 

She sewed from eight to six, with half an hour for 
lunch. She always took work home and sometimes 
she sewed for half of Sunday, for living expenses con- 


I42 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


sumed all of her $4 a week. Her stomach had failed 
her in the intensity of her occupation and from the 
insufficient food she was able to purchase, and she 
needed all the extra money she could earn for doctor’s 
bills and medicine. 

She was thin, spent, worn, and pale, when Gerda 
came over from Russia, four years after Elena had 
arrived. Gerda was a strong, attractive girl, with 
good health, dark curling hair, and a lovely color. 

Entering the same factory with Elena, she soon be- 
came almost as able as her sister in fine sewing, and 
almost as ill. She earned $3 a week. 

The factory was owned by a young German widow, 
Mrs. Mendell, an extremely attractive, pretty, and 
skilful person, appearing in her office an agreeable 
and well-educated young woman, and able to produce 
the most engaging little dresses, caps, and undermuslins 
for children, at a high profit, by paying extremely small 
wages to skilled immigrant seamstresses. In her 
workroom, Mrs. Mendell alternately terrorized and 
flattered the girls. She speeded them constantly. 
Unless they had done as much work as she wished to 
accomplish through the day, she refused to speak to 
them. She made the younger girls put on her boots, 
and dress her when she changed her office frock for 
the clothes in which she motored home at night. 
And in the morning she punished girls who had not 


FINE HAND-SEWING 143 


finished as much work as she wished over night by 
giving them the worst paid and hardest sewing in the 
factory. 

One night she sent Elena and Gerda home with 
two great bundles of infants’ bands — shoulder-straps 
and waistbands — to be made ready to be fastened 
to long skirts the next morning. They were all to be 
feather-stitched around the shoulder-bands and upper 
edges of the waist-bands, three buttons sewed on, 
and three buttonholes made in each. This was to be 
done for 23 cents a piece — a quarter a dozen. 

In the morning after she had completed this work, 
Elena felt so nervous and ill when she went to the 
factory, that as she handed Mrs. Mendell back the 
bundle and received the quarter, she burst into tears. 
She told Mrs. Mendell she was sick. She could not 
live and work as she was working. Gerda’s eyes were 
always strained. Their wages must be raised. 

Mrs. Mendell replied with calm and self-approba- 
tion, that she herself stayed in the factory all day, but 
she never complained in any such way. However, she 
raised Elena’s wages 50 cents. 

At this time the two girls lived in a tiny, inner room 
with one window, on an air-shaft in an East Side 
tenement. For this they paid $8 a month. It was 
scarcely more than a closet, holding one chair, one 
table, and a bed; and so small that Elena and Gerda 


144 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


could scarcely squeeze in between their meagre fur- 
nishings. ‘They did their own washing, cooked their 
own breakfasts on the landlady’s stove, prepared a 
lunch they took with them to the factory, and paid 
20 cents a night apiece for dinner. Almost all the 
money they had left, after their lodging and board and 
the barest necessities for clothing were paid for, went 
for medicines and doctors. 

Their clothing was so poor that they were ashamed 
to go out on Sunday — when everybody else put on 
“‘best dresses ’’ — and would sit in their room all day. 
However, in the evenings they sometimes went to see 
relatives in the Bronx, and on one of these occa- 
sions they had a piece of good fortune of the oddest 
character. On the elevated road on which they 
happened to be riding there was an accident —a 
collision. They were neither of them injured; but 
they saw the collision, and were summoned as wit- 
nesses for the road. ‘They were obliged to spend sev- 
eral mornings away from making children’s dresses, 
waiting to give their testimony in the criminal court, 
which they found highly pleasant and recreative. 
However, after all, the road settled with the prosecu- 
tors before the girls were ever called on for their testi- 
mony, and the case never came to trial. But the 
railroad gave Elena and Gerda for the time they had 
spent on its behalf a check for $20. 


FINE HAND-SEWING 145 


At this they determined to move to better quarters. 
The factory, besides, had grown and moved into larger 
rooms farther up-town (though its workrooms had 
always been well lighted and ventilated), so that the 
girls were obliged to spend more than they could afford 
for carfare. With the $20 they furnished their 
room in Harlem. They were in a wild, disreputable 
neighborhood, of which the girls remained quite 
independent. But the rooms were airy and attrac- 
tive. Having now their own furnishings, they paid 
only $8 a month for all this added space and com- 
fort, so that they could continue to live in these ac- 
commodations, but only with severe effort and indus- 
try on Elena’s part. For Gerda’s optic nerve was now 
so affected by strain, and she suffered so from indiges- 
tion, faintness, and illness, that she was unable to go 
to the factory. She kept the house, doing some sew- 
ing at home. 

Elena’s wages during the next six years, by struggle 
after struggle with Mrs. Mendell, were raised to $7 
a week after her thirteen years of service. But she 
was nearly frantic with alarm over her failing health. 
She was thin and frail, and eating almost nothing from 
gastritis. 

At last a woman physician she saw told her she must 
stop work or she would die. Her stomach was almost 
completely worn out. This doctor sent her to a hos- 

L 


146 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


pital, and visited Gerda and sent her, too, to a hos- 
pital. 

This was four years ago. But both the young 
women are so broken down that no efforts of public or 
private philanthropic medical care in the state and 
the city have been able to restore their health. The 
doctors in whose charge they have been say that these 
young women’s strength is simply worn out from these 
years of overwork and strain and poor and scanty food, 
and that they can never again be really well. 

They leave the hospitals or sanatoria for a few weeks 
of wage-earning, six, at the most, to return again ill 
and unable to do any work at all. Their life is now 
indeed a curious modern pilgrimage among the va- 
rious forms of charitable cure and the great charitable 
institutions of the community which is entirely un- 
able to return to them the strength they have lost 
in its industries. 

It may be pointed out that the exhaustion of these 
two workers has involved a loss and expense not only 
to themselves, but to the factory management, which 
has been obliged to employ in Elena’s place two other 
less skilful embroiderers, and to the taxpayers and 
the philanthropists of New York who support charity 
hospitals and vacation homes. 

These chronicles express as clearly as possible, in the 
order followed, monotony and speeding in factory 


SPEEDING AND LONG HOURS 147 


work among younger and older women, operatives and 
hand-workers. 

While one of the strangest results of the introduc- 
tion of machinery into modern industry is that in- 
stead of liberating the human powers and initiative of 
the workers, it has often tended to devitalize and warp 
these forces to the functions of machines, yet this 
result is so strange that it cannot seem inevitable. 
Speeding for long hours at machines, rather than 
machine labor itself, appears most widely responsible 
for the fatigue described by the operatives whose 
trade histories have been narrated. Further, speed- 
ing and long hours were responsible for the most 
drastic experience of exhaustion related among all 
the factory workers encountered — the experience of 
Elena and Gerda Nikov, who were employed not at 
machines, but in handiwork so delicate it might with 
more accuracy be called a handicraft. 

The exhaustion of these workers was partly at- 
tributable to their custom of pursuing their trade not 
only in factory hours, but outside the factory, at 
home. Within the last year, the most widely con- 
structive effort to abolish sweated home labor from 
the needle trades ever undertaken in this country 
has been initiated by the New York cloak makers, to 
whom we next turned for an account of their indus- 
trial fortunes. 


CHAPTER V 


THE CLOAK MAKERS’ STRIKE AND THE PREFERENTIAL 
UNION SHOP 


Forty million dollars are invested in New York 
in the making of women’s cloaks, skirts, and suits. 
One hundred and eighty million dollars’ worth of 
these garments are produced in New York in a 
year.! 

Between sixty and seventy thousand organized 
men and women in the city are employed in these 
industries. The Union members constitute ninety- 
five per cent of the workers engaged in the trade, 
and about ten thousand of these members are women.? 

It seems at first strange to find that the multi- 
tudinous fields of the metropolitan needle trades, — 
industries traditionally occupied by sewing women, — 
are, in fact, far more heavily crowded with sewing 
men. ‘There is, however, a division of labor, the men 
doing practically all the cutting, machine sewing, and 
pressing, and in many cases working at hand-finishing ; 

1 Printed statement of the Cloak, Skirt, and Suit Manufacturers’ 
Protective Association, July 11, 1910. 


2 Estimate of the Waverly Place Office of the International Ladies’ 
Garment Workers’ Union, November 26 to 30. 


148 


THE CLOAK MAKERS’ STRIKE 149 


the women practically never cutting, machine sewing, 
or pressing, and in all cases working at hand-finish- 
ing. 

A general strike involving all these men and women 
in the cloak making trade was declared on the 8th of 
July, 1910. The industry had for years burdened both 
its men and women workers with certain grave diffi- 
culties — an unstandardized wage, the subcontract- 
ing system, competition with home work, and long 
seasonal hours. 

The subcontracting system bore most severely on 
the women in the trade, as the greater proportion of 
the finishers were women, and before the strike nearly 
every finisher was employed by a subcontractor. 

The wages paid to finishers in the same shop, whether 
they were girls or men, were the same. But as com- 
pared with cutters, basters, and operators the finishers 
both before and since the strike had always been paid 
relatively below their deserts. 

Wages were lowered, not only by the unstandardized 
rates prevalent through the sub-subcontracting sys- 
tem, but also by the practice of sending hand-finishing 
out of the factories and shops to be done at home. 
When inquiry was made of numerous self-supporting 
girls employed as cloak finishers, most of them said 
that at the end of the working day they were too 
exhausted to carry any sewing home. But work had 


I50 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


been carried away by various strong girls in the trade, 
and by old men, and by young men to their families. 

Among the women cloak finishers, Rose Halowitch, 
a delicate little Russian girl of seventeen, a helper in a 
cloak factory, who gave her account to the Consumers’ 
League, about two years and a half ago received a wage 
of from $3.50 to $6 a week. In busy weeks she 
would work from eight in the morning till eight at 
night, with only one stop of an hour for her insufficient 
noon lunch, for which she could afford to spend only 
6 or 7 cents. 

Among the home workers Rhetta Salmonsen, a 
Russian woman of forty, the mother of four children, 
used to finish at night the cloaks brought to her by 
her husband, who worked through the day as an 
operator ina cloak factory. Between them they would 
earn $12 and $15 in busy weeks. In these weeks there 
were some occasions when Mrs. Salmonsen would do 
the housework till her husband came home late at 
night. After clearing away his supper and putting 
the children to bed, she would start felling seams at 
midnight; and in order to complete the cloaks he 
had brought before he returned to the shop in the 
morning, she would sew until she saw the white day- 
light coming in at the tenement window, and it was 
time for her to prepare breakfast again. With all 
this industry, as her husband had been ill and there 


THE CLOAK MAKERS’ STRIKE I51 


had been three months of either slack work or idle- 
ness, the family had fallen in debt. Rent, food, and 
shoes alone had cost them $400. This left less than 
$100 a year for all the other clothing and expenses of 
six people in New York. Against such a standard of 
living as this, then, cloak finishers were obliged to 
compete as long as they attempted to underbid the 
hours and prices of home work. 

Among the stronger girls who had taken work home, 
Ermengard Freiburg, a powerful young Galician 
woman of twenty-eight, who had been finishing cloaks 
ever since she was eleven, had earned $1 in the first 
week and had advanced rapidly to $3 a week. In 
the last years, however, she had not carried any work 
home. She had sewed on piece-work from eight in 
the morning to six at night with an hour for lunch and 
no night work or overtime. She had earned from $20 
to $25 a week in the busy weeks when the better 
pieces of work were more plentiful; and in the slack 
weeks $6 and $7. Ermengard had no complaint 
whatever to make about her own trade fortunes. 
All her concern and conversation were for the numbers 
of women cloak makers who lacked her own wonder- 
ful strength. Successful without education, she was 
astonishingly destitute of the wearisome fallacy of 
complacent self-reference characteristic of many 
people of uncommon ability. During the past year 


152 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


she had twice been discharged for organizing the work- 
ers in cloak factories where she was employed. In the 
first establishment subcontracting had made condi- 
tions too hard for most of the women; and in the 
second, wages were too low for a decent livelihood for 
most of the workers. 

These instances serve to express in the industry and 
lives of women cloak workers the subcontracting 
system, long seasonal hours, home work, and an un- 
standardized wage — the features under discussion 
in the cloak making trade in the spring of rgro. 

The whole cloak making trade of New York presents, 
for an outside observer, the kaleidoscopic interest 
of a population not static. The cutter of one decade 
is the employer of another decade. In the general 
strike of the cloakmakers in 1896 nearly all the man- 
ufacturers were German. In the strike of last sum- 
mer nearly all the manufacturers were Galician and 
Russian. 

This aspect of the New York needle trades must be 
borne in mind in realizing those occurrences in the last 
strike which led to the present joint effort of both 
manufacturers and workers to standardize the wage 
scale, to regulate seasonal hours, to abolish the sub- 
contracting system and home work, and to establish 
the preferential Union shop throughout the metro- 
politan industry. 


THE CLOAK MAKERS’ STRIKE 153 


Dr. Henry Moskowitz, an effective non-partisan 
leader in achieving the settlement of the strike, was 
an eye-witness and student of all its crises, and the 
outline of its history below is mainly drawn from his 
chronicle and observation. 

Between the cloak makers and the manufacturers 
of New York a contest waged in numerous strikes had 
continued for twenty-five years. The agreements 
reached at the close of these strikes had been only 
temporary, because the cloak makers were never able 
to maintain a Union strong enough to hold the points 
won at the close of the struggle. The cloak makers 
had always proved themselves heroic strikers, but 
feeble Unionists, lacking sustained power. Again and 
again, men and women who had been sincerely ready 
to risk starvation for the justice of their claims during 
the fight would in peace become indifferent, fail to 
attend Union meetings, fail to pay Union dues; and 
the organization, strong in the time of defeat through 
the members’ zeal, would weaken through their negli- 
gence in the critical hour of an ill-established success. 

The main contestants in this struggle had been the 
cloak makers on one side, and on the other the manu- 
facturers belonging to the Cloak and Suit Manufac- 
turers’ Protective Association. The majority of the 
manufacturers in the association are men of standing 
in the trade, controlling large West Side establish- 


154 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


ments, and supplying fifty per cent of the New York 
output, though they represent only a small percent- 
age of the cloak houses of New York. These cloak 
houses altogether number between thirteen and four- 
teen hundred, most of them on the East Side and the 
lower West Side, manufacturing cheap and medium- 
grade clothing. Such smaller houses had frequently 
broken the strikes of the last twenty-five years by 
temporary agreements in which they afterwards 
proved false to the workers. Many small dealers 
had become rich merchants through such strike har- 
vests. 

On this account the cloak makers naturally dis- 
trusted employers’ agreements. On the other hand, 
in many instances in the settlement of former strikes, 
cloak makers had made with certain dealers secret 
terms which enabled them to undersell their competi- 
tors. For this reason the manufacturers naturally 
distrusted cloak makers’ agreements. With this mu- 
tual suspicion, the strike of 1910 began in June in two 
houses, an East Side and a West Side house. From 
the first house the workers went out because of the 
subcontracting system, and from the second practi- 
cally on account of lockout. 

On the 3d of July, a mass meeting of 10,000 cloak- 
makers gathered in Madison Square Garden. It was 
decided that the question of a general strike should be 


THE CLOAK MAKERS’ STRIKE 155 


put to the vote of the 10,000 Union members. Ballot- 
ing continued at the three polls of the three Union 
offices for two succeeding days. Of these 10,000, all 
but about 600 voted in favor of the strike, and of 
these 600 the majority afterward declared that they, 
too, were in sympathy with the action. 

The wide prevalence of the difficulties which led 
to the decision of the 10,c00 workers assembled at 
Madison Square Garden was evinced by the fact that 
within the next week an army of over 40,000 men and 
women in the New York garment trade joined the 
Cloak and Suit Makers’ Union. 

These crowds poured into the three Union offices, 
filled the building entries, the streets before them, 
reached sometimes around the block — great pro- 
cessions of Rumanians, Hungarians, Poles, Germans, 
Italians, Galicians, and Russians, the last two na- 
tionalities in the greatest numbers, men and women 
who had been driven out of Europe by military con- 
scription, by persecution and pillage, literally by fire 
and sword, bearded patriarchs, nicely dressed young 
girls with copies of Sudermann and Gorky under their 
arms, shawled, wigged women with children clinging 
to their skirts, handsome young Jews who might have 
stood as models for clothiers’ advertisements — cut- 
ters, pressers, operators, finishers, subcontractors, 
and sub-subcontractors; for these, too, struck with 


156 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


all the rest. In watching these sewing men and sew- 
ing women streaming through the Union office on 
Tenth Street — an office hastily improvised in an old 
dwelling-house in a large room, evidently formerly a 
bedroom, and still papered with a delicate design of 
white and blue stripes, and a border of garlands of 
rosebuds — it seemed to an onlooker that almost no 
economic procession could ever before have comprised 
elements so very catholic and various. Who could 
lead such a body? How could the position of their 
great opponents, from day to day, be made known to 
them? As a matter of fact, no one man can be said 
to have led the 60,000 New York cloak makers. In 
the absence of such control, the corps of more promi- 
nent Union officers and their attorney, Meyer London, 
and through these men the multitudes of the Union 
members, were virtually guided by an East Side Yid- 
dish paper, the Vorwdris. 

In the meantime, while these multitudes were flock- 
ing into the Union early in July, the Cloak Manu- 
facturers’ Association, representing beforehand about 
seventy-five houses, had by the inclusion of many 
smaller firms extended its membership to twelve hun- 
dred establishments.1 


1 For this account of the position of different cloak manufacturers 
the writers wish to acknowledge the kindness of Miss Mary Brown 
Sumner of the Survey. 


THE CLOAK MAKERS’ STRIKE 157 


Soon after the formation of the alliance, it became 
apparent to the smaller firms that the larger ones were 
not in any haste for settlement. The latter felt that 
they could beat their opponents by a waiting game; 
while the smaller firms, with their lesser capital, 
scarcely more able than their workers to exist through 
a prolonged beleaguering of the cloak makers, felt that 
the present stand of the larger manufacturers involved, 
not only beating the Unionists, but driving themselves, 
the weaker manufacturers, out of the industry. 

One by one, they left the association, sought the 
Union headquarters, and settled with the cloak makers. 
The profit reaped by these firms starting to work in- 
duced others to meet the workers’ demands. By the 
end of July and the first week in August, six hundred 
smaller firms, employing altogether 20,000 cloak- 
makers, had settled.| In many instances the men 

1 These were the most important clauses of these early settlements 
as regards women workers: — 

I. The said firm hereby engages the Union to perform all the 
tailoring, operating, pressing, finishing, cutting, and buttonhole- 
making work to be done by the firm in the cloak and suit business 
during one year . . . from date; and the Union agrees to perform said 
work in a good and workmanlike manner. 

II. During the continuance of this agreement, operators shall be 
paid in accordance with the annexed price list. The following is the 
scale of wages for week hands: . . . skirt makers, not less than 
$24 per week; skirt basters, not less than $15 per week; skirt fin- 


ishers, not less than $12 per week; buttonhole makers, not less 
than $1.10 per hundred buttonholes. 


158 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


and women marched back to their work with bands of 
music playing and with flying flags and banners. 

In July two attempts were made, on behalf of the 
cloak makers, by the State Board of Arbitration to 
induce the manufacturers to meet the Union members 
and to arbitrate with them. These attempts failed 
because the Union insisted on the question of the closed 
shop as essential. The manufacturers refused to ar- 
bitrate the question of the closed shop. 

At this juncture a public-spirited retailer of Boston, 
Mr. Lincoln Filene, entered the controversy. Mr. 
Filene resolved that, as a large consumer, he and his 
class had no right to shirk their responsibility by 
passively acquiescing in sweat-shop conditions. Asan 


Ill. A working week shall consist of forty-eight hours in six work- 
ing-days. 

IV. No overtime work shall be permitted between the fifteenth 
day of November and the fifteenth day of January and during the 
months of June and July. During the rest of the year employees 
may be required to work overtime, provided all the employees of 
the firm, as well as all the employees of the outside contractors of 
the firm, are engaged to the full capacity of the factories. No over- 
time shall be permitted on Saturday nor on any day for more than 
two and a half hours, nor before 8 A.m. or after 8 p.m. For overtime 
work the employees shall receive double the usual pay. No con- 
tracting or subcontracting shall be permitted by the firm inside its 
factory, and no operator or finisher shall be permitted more than one 
helper. 

XIII. No work shall be given employees to be done at their homes. 

XV. Only members of respective locals above named shall be 
employed by the firm to do the said work. 


THE CLOAK MAKERS’ STRIKE 159 


intermediary between the wholesaler and the public, 
the retailer had an important part in the conflict, not 
only because he suffered directly from the temporary 
paralysis of the industry, but also because his indiffer- 
ence to the claims of the worker for a just wage, 
sanitary factory conditions, abolition of home work, 
and for a decent working-day was equivalent to an 
active complicity in the guilt of the manufacturer. 
Through Mr. Filene’s intervention, the manufacturers 
and the Union officials agreed to confer, and to request 
Mr. Louis Brandeis of Boston to act as chairman. 

Mr. Brandeis had, at the outset, the confidence of 
both parties. Each side recognized in him that com- 
bination of wide legal learning and a social economic 
sense which had made him an effective participant 
in the development of the progressive political and 
industrial policies of the nation. The employers wel- 
comed Mr. Brandeis because they had faith in his 
sense of fairness. The cloak makers welcomed him 
because of his brilliant and signal service to the entire 
trade-union movement and to American working 
women in securing from the United States Supreme 
Court the decision which declared constitutional the 
ten-hour law for the women laundry workers of Ore- 
gon. 

The conference that was to have determined the 
industrial fortunes of more than 40,000 New York 


160 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


workers for the following year opened on Thursday 
morning, July 28, in a small room in the Metropolitan 
Life Building. Mr. Brandeis was in the chair. On 
one side of a long table sat the ten representatives of 
the cloak makers, including their attorney, a member 
of the Vorwdris staff, and the Secretary of the Inter- 
national Garment Workers’ Union, all these three 
men of middle age, intellectual faces, and sociological 
education, keenly identified with the ideas and prin- 
ciples of the workers; three or four rather younger 
representatives of the cloak makers, alert and thor- 
oughly Americanized; and three older men, who had 
fought throughout the quarter-of-a-century contest, 
men with the sort of trade education that nothing but 
a working experience can give, deeply imbued with 
the traditions of that struggle, a hostility to “‘scabs,”’ 
a distrust (too often well founded) of employers, and 
an unshaken belief in the general panacea of the closed 
shop — a subject which was, by agreement, to remain 
undiscussed in the conference. All these men, with 
the exception of their attorney, Mr. London, had cut 
and sewed on the benches of the garment trade. On 
the other side of the table sat the ten representatives 
of the manufacturers, some of them men of wide cul- 
ture and learning, versed in philosophies, and promi- 
nent members of the Ethical Society, some of them 
New York financiers who had come from East Side 


THE CLOAK MAKERS’ STRIKE 161 


sweat shops. Perhaps the most eager opponent of the 
closed shop in their body was a cosmopolitan young 
manufacturer, a linguist and “‘literary’”’ man, inter- 
ested in “style” from every point of view, who had 
introduced into the New York trade from abroad a 
considerable number of the cloak designs now widely 
worn throughout America. This man felt the keenest 
personal pride in his output. He is said at one time 
to have remarked, ‘‘Le cloak c’est moi.’’ And, bi- 
zarre as it may seem to an outsider, a really sincere 
reason of his against accepting workmen on the recom- 
mendation of the Union was that the cloak manu- 
facturer as an artist should adopt toward his workers 
“‘the attitude of Hammerstein to his orchestra.”” One 
of the manufacturers had been a strike leader in 1896. 
“Your bitterest opponent of fourteen years ago sits 
on the same side of the table with you now,” said one 
of the older cloak makers, in a deep, intense voice, as 
the men took their places. 

Mr. Brandeis opened the conference with these 
words: ‘‘Gentlemen, we have come together in a 
matter which we must all recognize is a very serious 
and an important business — not only to settle this 
strike, but to create a relation which will prevent 
~ similar strikes in the future. That work is one which, 
it seems to me, is approached in a spirit that makes the 
situation a very hopeful one, and I am sure, from my 


M 


162 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


conferences with counsel of both parties! and with 
individual members whom they represent, that those 
who are here are all here with that desire.” 

Up to a certain point in the conference, which lasted 
for three days, this seemed to be true. The manu- 
facturers agreed to abolish home work, to abolish 
subcontracting, to give a weekly half-holiday, be- 
sides the Jewish Sabbath, during June, July, and Aug- 
ust, and to limit overtime work to two hours and a 
half a day during the busy season, with no work per- 
mitted after half past eight at night, or before eight 
in the morning. Beyond this, the question of hours 
was left to arbitration. Also, the question of wages 
was left to arbitration. 

The last subject to be dealt with at the Brandeis 
conference was the general method of enforcing agree- 
ments between the Manufacturers’ Association and 
the Union. It was in this discussion that the question 
of the closed shop and the open shop came before the 
conference. 

Though the Union leaders had agreed to eliminate 
the discussion of the closed shop before they entered 
into negotiations, it was almost impossible for them to 
refrain from suggesting it as a means of enforcing 
agreements. As one of the cloak makers, one of the 


1 Mr. London for the cloak makers, and Mr. Cohen for the man- 
ufacturers. 


THE CLOAK MAKERS’ STRIKE 163 


old leaders of the labor movement in America, said: 
“This organization of cloak makers in the city of 
New York can only control the situation where Union 
people are employed. They have absolutely no con- 
trol of the situation where non-union people are 
employed. They cannot enforce any rules, nor any 
discipline of any kind, shape, or description, and if 
we are to codperate in any way that will be abso- 
lutely effective, then the . . . Manufacturers’ Asso- 
ciation, . . . it seems to me, should see that the 
necessary first step is that they shall run Union 
shops.’’? 

The Union shop the speaker had in mind, the Union 
shop advocated by the Vorwdris and desired, as it 
proved, by a majority of the workers, was a different 
matter from the closed shop, which constitutes a 
trade monopoly by limiting the membership of a trade 
to a certain comparatively small number of workers. 

The institution of the closed shop is by intention 
autocratic and exclusive. The institution of the Union 
shop is by intention democratic and inclusive. With 
the cloak makers’ organization, entrance into the Union 
was almost a matter of form. There were no prohibi- 
tive initiation fees, or dues, as in other unions. They 
offered every non-union man and woman an oppor- 
tunity to join their ranks. 


1 Stenographic minutes of the Brandeis conference. 


164 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


The manufacturers contended that they had no 
objection to the voluntary enlistment of non-union 
men in Union ranks; but they would not insist that 
all their workers belong to the Union. 

This deadlock was reached on the third day of the 
conference. At this point Mr. Brandeis brought 
before the meeting the opinion that ‘‘an effective 
codperation between the manufacturers and the Union 

. would involve, ... of necessity, a strong Union.” 
“T realize,” he said, . . . ‘from a consideration of 
. . . general Union questions, that in the ordinary 
open shop, where that prevails, there is great difficulty 
in building up the Union. I felt, therefore, particu- 
larly in view of the fact that somany of the members 
of the Garment Workers’ Union are recent members, 
that to make an effective Union it was necessary that 
you should be aided . . . by the manufacturers, .. . 
and that aid could be effectively . . . given by pro- 
viding that the manufacturers should, in the employ- 
ment of labor hereafter, give preference to Union men, 
where the Union men were equal in efficiency to any 
non-union applicants. ... That presented in the 
rough what seemed to me a proper basis for coming 
together. ... I think, if such an arrangement as 
we have discussed can be accomplished, it will be the 
greatest advance, not only that unionism has made in 
this country, but it would be one of the greatest ad- 


THE CLOAK MAKERS’ STRIKE 165 


vances that has generally been made in improving 
the condition of the working-man, for which unionism 
is merely an instrument.” 

This, then, was the first public presentation of the 
idea of the preferential shop. Mr. Brandeis, as 
a result of close study of labor disputes and a rich 
experience in settling strikes, had reached the conclu- 
sion that the position of the adherents of the closed as 
well as those of the open shop was economically and 
socially untenable. The inherent objection to the 
closed shop, he contends, is that it creates an uncon- 
trolled and irresponsible monopoly of labor. 

On the other hand, the so-called open shop, even if 
conducted with fairness and honesty on the part of 
the employer, is apt to result in a disintegration of 
the Union. It has been a frequent experience of or- 
ganized labor that, even after a strike has been won, 
men drop out of the Union and leave the burden of 
Union obligation to the loyal minority, who, weakened 
in numbers, face not only a loss of what the strike has 
gained, but a retrogression of those Union standards 
that have been the result of past struggles and sacri- 
fices. 

By the preferential Union plan, when an employer 
obliges himself to prefer Union to non-union men, a 
Union man in good standing, that is, a Union man who 
has paid his dues and met his Union obligations, is 


166 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


insured employment to a limited extent, and the dues 
represent a premium paid by him for such employment. 

It was not an easy task to secure assent to this idea 
from the manufacturers, for Mr. Brandeis made it 
clear that, while the plan did not oblige the manu- 
facturers to coerce men into joining the Union, it 
clearly placed them on record in favor of a trade-union, 
and obliged them to do nothing, directly or indirectly, 
to injure the Union, and positively to do everything 
in their power, outside of coercion, to strengthen the 
Union. 

In Mr. Brandeis’ appeal to the Union representa- 
tives he referred to the history of the Cloak Makers’ 
Union as a telling illustration of the futility of their 
past policy. He pointed out that the membership of 
the Union during a strike was no test of its strength — 
a Union’s solidity rested upon its membership in time 
of peace. Were they not justified in assuming that 
what had occurred in the past of the Cloak Makers’ 
Union would occur in the future, and that its member- 
ship would dwindle to a small number of the faithful ? 
How could their organization be permanently strength- 
ened ? 

Cloak making, as a seasonal trade, offered a fair 
field for proving the efficiency of the preferential 
plan, for in the slack season the manufacturers must, 
by its terms, prefer Union men. The industrial situa- 


THE CLOAK MAKERS’ STRIKE 167 


tion provided a test of this good faith. The Union 
leaders could then effectively show the non-union 
worker the advantage of the union membership. 

The final formation of the preferential union shop 
as presented to both sides by Mr. Brandeis, Mr. 
London, and Mr. Cohen, in the Brandeis conference, 
was this: ‘‘The manufacturers can and will declare 
in appropriate terms their sympathy with the Union, 
their desire to aid and strengthen the Union, and their 
agreement that, as between Union and non-union 
men of equal ability to do the job, the Union men shall 
be given the preference.”’ 

The manufacturers were willing to make this 
agreement. But the representatives of the Union 
received it with a natural suspicion bred by years of 
oppression. ‘‘Can the man who has ground us down 
year after year suddenly be held by a sentiment for 
the organization he has fought for a quarter of a 
century ?”’ they asked. “Between Union and non- 
union men, will he candidly give the preference to 
Union men of equal ability ? Will he not rather, since 
the question of ability is a matter of personal judgment 
and is left to his judgment, prefer the non-union man, 
and justify his preference by a pretence, in each case, 
that he considers the skill of the non-union man su- 
perior ?”’ 


Nevertheless, a majority of the leaders of the cloak 


168 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


makers were willing to try theplan. ... A minority 
refused. ‘This minority was influenced partly by its 
certain knowledge that the 40,000 cloak makers would 
never accept an agreement based on the idea of the 
preferential Union shop, and partly by its complete 
distrust of the good will of the manufacturers. The 
minority was trusted and powerful. It won. The 
conference broke. 

The Vorwdrts printed a statement that the prefer- 
ential shop was the “open shop with honey.” The 
news of the Brandeis conference reached the cloak 
makers through the bulletins of this paper; and during 
its progress and after its close, frantic crowds stood 
before the office on the lower East Side, waiting for 
these bulletins, eager for the victory of the closed shop, 
the panacea for all industrial evils. 

After the decision of the leaders, after the breaking 
of the conference, the cloak makers who had settled 
gave fifteen per cent of their wages to support those’ 
standing out for the closed shop, and volunteered to 
give fifty per cent. The Vorwdrts headed a subscrip- 
tion list with $2000 for the strikers, and collected 
$50,000. A furore for the closed shop arose. Young 
boys and bearded old men and young women came to 
the office and offered half their wages, three-quarters 
of their wages. One boy offered to give all his wages 
and sell papers for his living. Every day the office 


THE CLOAK MAKERS’ STRIKE 169 


was besieged by committees, appointed by the men and 
women in the settled shops, asking to contribute to 
the cause more than the percentage determined by the 
Union. These were men and women accustomed to 
enduring hardships for a principle, men and women 
who had fought in Russia, who were revolutionists, 
willing to make sacrifices, eager to make sacrifices. 
Their blind faith was the backbone of the strike. 

This furore was continuing when, in the third week 
in August, the loss of contracts by the manufacturers 
and the general stagnation of business due to the idle- 
ness of 40,000 men and women, normally wage-earn- 
ers, induced a number of bankers and merchants of 
the East Side to bring pressure for a settlement of 
the strike. Louis Marshall, an attorney well known in 
New York in Jewish charities, assembled the lawyers 
of both sides. They drew up an agreement in which 
the preferential union shop again appeared as the basis 
of future operations, formulated as in the Brandeis 
conference. 

The Vorwdris printed the result of the Marshall 
conference with deep concern. It maintained a neu- 
tral attitude. The editorials urged that the readers 
consider the whole document soberly, discuss it freely 
in local meetings, and vote for themselves, on their 
own full understanding, after mature conviction on 
each point. | 


179 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


Tremendous crowds surged around the Vorwarts 
office. They amost mobbed the East Side leaders, 
with their voluble questioning about the preferential 
Union shop. ‘Thousands of men and women and chil- 
dren called out pleas and reproaches and recriminations 
in an avid personal demonstration possible only to 
their race. ‘‘Oh, you wouldn’t sell us out ?” they cried 
desperately. ‘‘You wouldn’t sell us out? You 
are our hope.”’ 

Imagine what these days of doubt, of an attempt to 
understand, meant to these multitudes, knowing no 
industrial faith but that of the closed shop which had 
failed them absolutely, wanderers from a strange 
country, turning wildly to their leaders, who could 
only tell them that they must determine their own 
fates, they must decide for themselves. These leaders 
have been blamed at once for their autocracy and for 
not mobilizing and informing and directing these 
multitudes more clearly and firmly. Their critics 
failed to conceive the remarkably various economic and 
political histories of the enormous concourse of human 
beings engaged in the needle trades of New York. 

However that may be, when the workers and their 
families surged around the Vorwdrts office and asked 
the leaders if they had betrayed them, Schlesinger, the 
business manager, and the old strike leaders addressed 
them from the windows, and said to the people, with 


THE CLOAK MAKERS’ STRIKE 171 


painful emotion: ‘‘You are our masters. What you 
decide we will report back to the association lawyers. 
What you decide shall be done.”’ 

Terrible was the position of these men. Well 
they knew that the winter was approaching; that 
the closed shop could not win; that the workers 
could not hear the truth about the preferential Union 
shop, and that the man who stood avowedly for the 
preferential shop, now the best hope of victory for the 
Union, would be called a traitor to the Union. 

In great anxiety, the meetings assembled. The 
workers had all come to the same conclusion. They 
all rejected the Marshall agreement. 

Soon after this, the tide of loyalty to the closed shop 
was incited to its high-water mark by the action of 
Judge Goff, who, as a result of a suit of one of the firms 
of the Manufacturers’ Association, issued an injunction 
against peaceful picketing, on the part of the strikers, 
on the ground that picketing for the closed shop was 
an action of conspiracy in constraint of trade, and 
therefore unlawful. 

The manufacturers were now, naturally, more 
deeply distrusted than ever on the East Side.1 The 


1 This decision met with disapproval, not only on the East Side. 
The New York Evening Post said: “Justice Goff’s decision embodies 
rather strange law and certainly very poor policy. One need not 
be a sympathizer with trade-union policy, as it reveals itself to-day, 
in order to see that the latest injunction, if generally upheld, would 


172 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


doctrine of the closed shop became almost ritualistic. 
Early in September, one of the Labor Day parades was 
headed by an aged Jew, white-bearded and fierce- 
eyed, —a cloak maker who knew no other words of 
English than those he uttered, — who waved a purple 
banner and shouted at regular intervals: ‘‘Closed 
shop! Closed shop!” That man represented the 
spirit of thousands of immigrants who have recently 
become trade-unionists in America. Impossible to 
say to such a man that the idea of the closed shop had 
been an enemy to the spread of trade-unionism in this 
country by its implication of monopolistic tyranny. 
Impossible, indeed, to say anything to Unionists 
whose reply to every just representation is, ‘‘ Closed 
shop”’; or to employers whose reply to every just 
representation is, ‘‘We do not wish other people to 
run our business.”’ This reply the Marshall confer- 
ence still had to hear for some days. It was now the 
first week in September. There was great suffering 
among the cloak makers. On the manufacturers’ 
side, contracts heretofore always filled by certain 
New York houses, in this prolonged stoppage of their 
factories were finally lost to them and placed with 
establishments in other important cloak making 


seriously cripple such defensive powers as legitimately belong to 
organized labor.” 

And the Times: “This is the strongest decision ever handed down 
against labor.” 


THE CLOAK MAKERS’ STRIKE 173 


centres — Cleveland, Philadelphia, Chicago, and even 
abroad. Two or three large Union houses settled for 
terms, in hours and wages, which were satisfactory 
to every one concerned, though lower than the de- 
mands on these points listed in the cloak makers’ 
first letter. 

Curiously enough, wages and hours had been left 
to arbitration, had never been thoroughly considered 
in the whole situation before. Neither the workers 
nor the employers had clearly stated what they really 
would stand for on these vital points. No one, not 
even the most wildly partisan figures on either side, 
supposed that the first demands as to wages and hours 
represented an ultimatum. The debaters in the 
Marshall conference now agreed on feasible terms on 
these points,’ though, curiously enough, the rates for 


1 These are the clauses of the Marshall agreement on wage scale 
and hours of labor which affect women workers. The term “‘sample 
makers’”’ includes, of course, sample makers of cloaks. The week 
workers among the cloak makers are principally the sample makers. 
But the greater proportion of the workers in the cloak factories are 
piece-workers. This explains why there is no definite weekly wage 
schedule listed for cloak workers as such. Sample makers, $22; 
sample skirt makers, $22; skirt basters, $14; skirt finishers, $10; 
buttonhole makers, Class A, a minimum of $1.20 per too button- 
holes; Class B a minimum of 80 cents per roo buttonholes. 

As to piece-work, the price to be paid is to be agreed upon by a 
committee of the employees in each shop and their employer. The 
chairman of said price committee of the employees shall act as the 
representative of the employees in their dealings with the employer. 


174 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


piece-work were left to the arbitration of individual 
shops. In spite of this fact, the majority of the 
workers are paid by piece-work. The former clauses 
of the agreement relating to the abolition of home work 
and of subcontracting remained practically as they 
had stood before.’ As for the idea of the preferential 
Union shop, it had undoubtedly been gaining ground. 
Naturally, at first, appearing to the Vorwarts’ staff and 
to many ardent unionists as opposed to unionism, it 


The weekly hours of labor shall consist of 50 hours in 6 working 
days, to wit, nine hours on all days except the sixth day, which shall 
consist of five hours only. 

No overtime work shall be permitted between the fifteenth day 
of November and the fifteenth day of January, or during the months 
of June and July, except upon samples. 

No overtime work shall be permitted on Saturdays, except to 
workers not working on Saturdays, nor on any day or more than 
two and one-half hours, nor before 8 A.m., nor after 8.30 P.M. 

For overtime work all week workers shall receive double the usual 
pay. 

1 There has been practically no complaint on the part of the workers 
or the public concerning the sanitary conditions of the larger houses. 
At present the strike settlement has established a joint board of sani- 
tary control, composed of three representatives of the public, Dr. 
W. J. Scheffelin, chairman, Miss Wald of the Nurses’ Settlement, and 
Dr. Henry Moskowitz of the Down-town Ethical Society ; two repre- 
sentatives of the workers, Dr. George Price, Medical Sanitary In- 
spector of the New York Department of Health, 1895-1904, and Mr. 
Schlesinger, Business Manager of the Vorwdrts; and two representa- 
tives of the manufacturers, Mr. Max Meier and Mr. Silver. The 
work of this committee will be the enforcement of uniform sanitary 
conditions in all shops, including the more obscure and smaller estab- 
lishments. 


THE CLOAK MAKERS’ STRIKE 175 


had now assumed a different aspect. This was the 
final formulation of the preferential Union shop in the 
Marshall agreement: ‘‘Each member of the Manu- 
facturers’ Association is to maintain a Union shop, a 
‘Union shop’ being understood to refer to a shop 
where Union standards as to working conditions pre- 
vail, and where, when hiring help, Union men are 
preferred, it being recognized that, since there are 
differences of skill among those employed in the trade, 
employers shall have freedom of selection between 
one Union man and another, and shall not be confined 
to any list nor bound to follow any prescribed order 
whatsoever. 

“Tt is further understood that all existing agreements 
and obligations of the employer, including those to 
present employees, shall be respected. The manu- 
facturers, however, declare their belief in the Union, 
and that all who desire its benefits should share in its 
burdens.” 

As will be seen, this formulation signified that 
the Union men available for a special kind of work in a 
factory must be sought before any other men. The 
words ‘‘non-union man,” the words arousing the 
antagonism of the East Side, are not mentioned. But 
whether the preference of Union men is or is not in- 
sisted on as strongly as in the Brandeis agreement 
must remain a matter of open opinion. 


176 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


This formulation was referred to the strike com- 
mittee. It was accepted by the strike committee, 
and went into force on September 8. 

The Vorwdris posted the news as a great Union 
victory. At the first bulletin, the news ran like wild- 
fire over the East Side. Multitudes assembled ; men, 
women, and children ran around Rutgers Square, in 
tumult and rejoicing. The workers seized London, 
the unionists’ lawyer, and carried him around the 
square on their shoulders, and they even made him 
stand on their shoulders and address the crowd from 
them. People sobbed and wept and laughed and 
cheered; and Roman Catholic Italians and Russian 
Jews, who had before sneered at each other as ‘‘da- 
goes”’ and “‘sheenies,” seized each other in their arms 
and called each other brother. 

Now that the men and women have returned to their 
shops, it remains for all the people involved — the 
manufacturers, the workers, the retailers, and the 
interested public — to make a dispassionate estimate 
of this new arrangement. Is the preferential shop so 
delicate a fabric as to prove futile? Has it sustaining 
power? Will the final agreement prove, at last, to be 
a Union victory? Will both sides act in good faith — 
the manufacturers always honestly preferring Union 
men, the Union leaders always maintaining a demo- 
cratic and an inclusive Union, without autocracy or 


THE CLOAK MAKERS’ STRIKE 177 


bureaucratic exclusion? Undoubtedly there will be 
failures on both sides. But the New York cloak 
makers’ strike may be historical, not only for its re- 
sults in the cloak industry, but for its contribution to 
the industrial problems of the country. 

No outsider can read the statement of the terms of 
the manufacturers’ preference without feeling that a 
joint agreement committee should have been estab- 
lished to consider cases of alleged unfair discrimination 
against Union workers. On the other hand, no out- 
sider can hear without a feeling of uneasiness such an 
assertion as was made to one of the writers — that 
strike breakers had been obliged to pay an initiation fee 
of one hundred dollars to enter the Cloak Makers’ 
Union. 

There is undoubtedly, on both sides, need of pa- 
tience and a long educational process to change the 
attitude of hostility and bitterness engendered by over 
twenty years of a false policy of antagonism. But 
never before, in the cloak makers’ history, have the 
men and women gone back to work after a strike hold- 
ing their heads as high as they do to-day.! It can be 
reasonably believed that their last summer’s struggle 
will achieve a permanent gain for the workers’ in- 
dustrial future. This narrative of the industrial for- 
tunes of the women cloak makers in New York in the 


1 This statement is written in the last week of September, 1910. 
N 


178 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


last year is given for its statement of the effects of the 
struggle for the Preferential Union Shop on their 
trade histories, and for its account of their gains as 
workers in the same trade with men. 

These cloak makers’ gains were local. What na- 
tional gains have American working women been able 
to obtain? For an answer to this question we turned 
to the results of the National Consumers’ League 
inquiry concerning the fortunes of women workers in 
laundries and its chronicle of the decision of the Federal 
Supreme Court on the point of their hours of labor. 


CHAPTER VI 
WOMEN LAUNDRY WORKERS IN NEW YORK 


(This article is composed of the reports of Miss Carola 
Woerishofer, Miss Elizabeth Howard Westwood, 
and Miss Mary Alden Hopkins, supplemented 
with an account of the Federal Supreme Court’s 
decision on the constitutionality of the Oregon 
Ten-Hour Law for laundry workers.) 


Wuat do self-supporting women away from home 
in New York give in their work, and what do they get 
from it, when their industry involves a considerable 
outlay of muscular strength? For a reply to this 
question the National Consumers’ League turned to 
the reports of women’s work as machine ironers and 
hand ironers, workers at mangles, folders, and shakers 
of sheets and napkins from wringers in the steam 
laundries of New York. 

For, although the labor at the machines in the 
laundry wash-rooms is done by men, and all work in 
laundries consists largely of machine tending, still 
women’s part in the industry can be performed only 
by unusually strong women.! 


1Tts severity may be indicated by an account of the work a ma- 
chine ironer in Illinois regularly performed before the passage of the 


179 


180 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


In the winter of 19¢7—1908 the National Consumers’ 
League had received from different parts of New York 
a series of letters filled with various complaints against 
specified laundries in this city — complaints stating 
that hours were long and irregular, wages unfair, the 
laundries dirty, and the girls seldom allowed to sit 
down, and containing urgent pleas to the women of the 
Consumers’ League to help the women laundry workers. 

After consulting some of the laundry women, the 
League determined to secure through a special inquiry 
a well-ascertained statement of conditions as a basis 
for State factory legislation for uniform improvements. 
A few months before, the constitutionality of the 
present New York legislation, as well as of almost all 
of the State legislation concerning the hours of work 
of adult women in this country, had been virtually 
determined by the decision of the Federal Supreme 
Court in regard to the ten-hour law for women laun- 
dry workers in Oregon. ‘The opinion of the National 


Illinois Ten-Hour Law, when conditions in that State were as they now 
are in the hotel and hospital laundries of New York. Miss Radway 
used to iron five hundred shirt bosoms a day. Holding the loose 
part of the shirt up above her head to prevent the muslin from being 
caught in the iron, she pressed the bosom in a machine manipulated 
by three heavy treads — by bearing all of her weight on her right foot 
stamping down on a pedal to the right ; then by bearing all her weight 
on her left foot, stamping down a pedal to the left; then by pressing 
down both pedals with a jump. To iron five hundred shirt bosoms 
required three thousand treads a day. 


WOMEN LAUNDRY WORKERS IN NEW YORK 181 


Supreme Court, which practically confirmed the 
passed New York laundry laws and made future laws 
for fair regulation for the women workers seem prac- 
ticable, will be given after the account of women’s 
work in laundries in New York. 

Miss Carola Woerishofer conducted the inquiry, 
which was confined to steam laundries, as hand 
laundries were more favorably described by many 
reliable authorities. Among these, the large laundries 
were commercial laundries, such as we all patronize, 
and hotel and hospital laundries. The features chiefly 
observed in all these establishments were sanitation, 
the danger of injury, and wages and hours of labor. 
For the account of the hospital and hotel laundries 
the Consumers’ League of the city of New York 
obtained the services of Miss Elizabeth Howard West- 
wood of Smith College and Miss Mary Alden Hopkins 
of Wellesley College. As a means of investigating 
commercial laundries, Miss Woerishofer, answering 
advertisements as they came, worked in laundries in 
trade employed in nearly every branch of the indus- 
try in which women are engaged throughout the 
borough of Manhattan. Her report follows. 


I 


“Naturally, the first question which faced me was 
that of finding a job. For this I turned to the laun- 


182 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


dry want ‘ads’ in the newspapers. To my surprise, as 
my investigation was made in the summer, which is, 
curiously enough, by far the slackest season in New 
York commercial laundries, I was never without work 
for more than a day at a time, although I changed con- 
tinually, for the sake of experience, averaging about a 
week in a place. 

“ The first establishment to which I went was known 
asa model laundry. It was large and well ventilated 
and had a dry floor. These sanitary conditions may 
be said to be fairly typical. In only one laundry did 
I find a girl who was compelled to stand in a wet 
place, though water overflowed sometimes into the 
girls’ quarters from the wash-rooms, where the men 
worked. In some of these wash-rooms the water is at 
times ankle-deep, a condition due only to bad drain- 
age, as other wash-rooms are absolutely dry. What- 
ever the condition of the work-rooms, the women’s 
dressing-rooms frequently had insanitary plumbing, 
and were verminous and unhealthful. In one laun- 
dry the water supply was contaminated, smelling and 
tasting offensively when it came from the faucet, and 
worse after it had passed through the cooler. The 
women here at first kept bottles of soda-water. Some 
old women had beer. But on a series of hot days, 
with hours from half past seven to twelve, and from 
one till any time up to ten at night, ro cents’ worth of 


WOMEN LAUNDRY WORKERS IN NEW YORK 183 


beer or soda-water a day did not go far to alleviate 
thirst, and soon drank a big hole in a wage of $5 a week. 
A complaint was sent to the Board of Health. After 
nearly three weeks, the Board of Health replied that 
the complaint must be sent to the Water Department. 
From the Water Department no reply could possibly 
come for several weeks more. And in the meantime, 
all the women workers in the laundry, impelled by 
intolerable thirst, drank the contaminated water. 

‘The work-room where I was employed had, on the 
whole, plenty of windows. These were left open. 
But when a room is large and full of machinery, arti- 
ficial light is needed all day, and the outside air does 
not come in very far to drive away the heat and the 
dampness. On going out at noon from a laundry 
where I had dipped shirts in hot starch all the morning 
at a breakneck pace, I was struck by the coolness of 
the day. That night I discovered that the thermom- 
eter had been registering 96° in the shade. A few 
fans should be put in each laundry. They could be 
run by the power that runs the machines. 

“In the ‘model laundry,’ I worked at first at a 
mangle, running spreads and sheets and towels be- 
tween two revolving cylinders. Here I found there 
was danger of slipping my fingers too far under the 
cylinders in the process of feeding. The mangle had 
a guard, to be sure, — a flexible metal bar about three- 


184 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


quarters of an inch above the feeding-apron in front 
of the cylinder. But I learned that this acted as a 
warning rather than a protection. ‘Once you get 
your fingers in, you never get them out,’ Jenny, the 
Italian girl beside me, said repeatedly. The Italian 
girls Anglicized their names, and Jenny had probably 
been Giovanna at home. 

‘ At the collar machine, at which I was stationed 
after lunch, there was an adequate guard where the 
collars were slipped in. Where they came out, how- 
ever, they had to be pushed in rapid succession under 
the farther side of a burning hot cylinder with no 
guard at all. To avoid touching the cylinder with 
my arm in this process, I was obliged either to raise it 
unnaturally high, or to stand on tiptoe. ‘You didn’t 
get burned to-day or yesterday,’ said Jenny, ‘but 
you sure will sometime. Everybody does on that 
machine.’ 

“In the ironing of collars and cuffs by machinery, 
there is continual risk of burns on hands and arms. 
At a sleeve-ironing machine, in another place I 
received some slight burn every day. And when I 
asked the girls if this were because I was ‘green,’ 
they replied that every one got burned at that ma- 
chine all the time. Each burn is due to ‘careless- 
ness, but if the girls were to be careful, they would 
have to focus their minds on self-protection instead of 


WOMEN LAUNDRY WORKERS IN NEW YORK 185 


the proper accomplishment of their task, and would 
also have to work at a lower rate of speed than the 
usual output of the laundries demands. A graver dan- 
ger than that from hot surfaces and from slightly pro- 
tected gas flames is from unguarded belts and gears. 

‘“‘ At mangles, too, the danger is grave. What the 
girls call ‘millionaire work’ — work that has to come 
out straight—in contrast with ‘ boarding-house 
work,’ must be shoved up to within a quarter of an 
inch of the cylinder. Fingers once caught in such 
mangles are crushed. Consider, in connection with 
these two facts, the high rate of speed at which the 
girls feed the work into the machine, and the pre- 
carious character of their task will be realized. How- 
ever, in many laundries, good mangles for table and 
bed linen are in use, which either have a stationary bar 
in front of the first cylinder, or else have the first roll, 
whether connected or not with the power, attached to 
a lever, and so constructed as to lift the pressure im- 
mediately from the finger, should it be slipped under- 
neath.! 


1 State Labor Law, paragraph 81. — Protection of Employees Op- 
erating Machinery: “... If a machine or any part thereof is in 
a dangerous condition or is not properly guarded, the use thereof 
may be prohibited by the Commissioner of Labor, and a notice to 
that effect shall be attached thereto. Such notice shall not be re- 
moved until the machine is made safe and the required safeguards 
are provided, and in the meantime such unsafe or dangerous machinery 
shall not be used.” 


186 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


“For the purpose of inspecting the machinery I 
visited with different factory inspectors, through the 
courtesy extended by the Department of Labor, all, 
so far as I was able to determine, of the commercial 
steam laundries in the borough of Manhattan. Out 
of sixty laundries inspected, I found that twenty-six 
had either unguarded or inadequately guarded mangles, 
collar presses, and collar dampeners, or else unguarded 
or inadequately guarded gears and belts. In a laun- 
dry visited when the boss was out, we conferred with 
the engineer about one particularly bad mangle. 

““What’s this machine for? To cut girls’ hands 
off ?’ asked the inspector. 

‘Well,’ said the engineer, ‘it came pretty near 
finishing up the last girl we had here — caught her 
arm in an apron-string and got both hands under the 
roll — happened over two months ago. Fingers cut 
off one hand, and all twisted and useless on the other.’ 

‘Instead of having the machine guarded, after this 
mutilation, the owner had employed a man to take 
chances here, instead of a girl. 

“This and all the illegal defects discovered were 
ordered remedied by the factory inspectors. But 
New York labor legislation, no matter how excellent, 
cannot be enforced, with the present number of in- 
spectors. An inspector will arrive on one day; will 
discover that rules are violated; will impose a fine; 


WOMEN LAUNDRY WORKERS IN NEW YORK 187 


will return in the next week and discover that rules 
are not violated; will, perforce, return to another part 
of the field; and after that the violation will continue 
as if he had never observed it. 

“Further, it is difficult for the inspector to discover, 
through employees, violations of the State laws enacted 
in their interest, as they risk being discharged for 
complaints. In addition, moreover, to this danger, 
bringing a charge means that the complainant must 
go to court, thus losing both time and money. A union 
organization would be the only possible means of 
settling the matter. Made up of the workers them- 
selves, it is always present to observe violations; and 
it offers to the workers the advantage of reporting 
to the State, not as individuals, but as a body. The 
codperative spirit present among almost all of the 
laundry workers should make organization entirely 
feasible.! 

“On entering a new situation I found, as a rule, 


1 Here is a letter from the Secretary of the Women’s Trade-Union 
League, stating the results of organization in the West in the laundry 
trade: ‘‘The laundry workers in San Francisco eight years ago were 
competing with the Chinese laundries. The girls working in the 
laundries there received about $10 a month, with the privilege of 
‘living in.’ Three days in the week they began work at 6 a.m. and 
worked until 2 A.m. the next morning. The other three days they 
worked from 7 A.M. to8 p.m. Since organization, they have established 
the nine-hour day and the minimum wage of $7. They have extended 
their organization almost the entire length of the Pacific Coast.” 


188 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


cordiality and friendly interest. On several occasions 
it was expressed by this social form : — 

“““ Say, you got a feller ?’ 

“Sure. Ain’t you got one?’ 

eure: 

“The girls are really very kind to one another, help- 
ing one another in their work, and by loans of lunch 
and money. 

‘“‘In one place a woman with a baby to support — 
a shaker earning $4.50 a week, and heavily in debt — 
used to borrow weekly a few pennies apiece from all 
the girls around her to pay her rent. And the pen- 
nies were always forthcoming, although the girls had 
hardly more than she had, and knew quite well that 
they were seldom returned. There was a great deal 
of swearing among the women in almost all of the 
laundries, but it was of an entirely good-natured 
character. 

‘““ While there was a natural division of labor, there 
was also an artificial one, created during lunch hours. 
A deep-rooted feeling of antagonism and suspicion 
exists between the Irish and the Italians, each race 
clubbing together from the different departments in 
separate bands. 

“* Aside from this distinction, there is another social 
cleavage — the high-wage earners sitting apart from 
the low-wage earners, through natural snobbishness. 


WOMEN LAUNDRY WORKERS IN NEW YORK 1&9 


In one laundry, the high-wage earners, though they 
often treated the $5 girls to stray sardines, cake, etc., 
were in the habit of sending young girls to the deli- 
catessen shop to get their lunches, and also to the 
saloon for beer. Then the girl had to hurry out on 
the street in her petticoat and little light dressing- 
sack that she wore for work, for they gave her no 
time to change. For this service the girl would get 
1o cents a week from each of the women she did er- 
rands for. They did not—the boss starcher ex- 
plained to me with quiet elegance — think of such a 
thing as drinking beer behind the boss’s back, but 
they ‘just didn’t want him to know.’ 

“The same difficulties in enforcing the law about 
protected machinery in laundries exist in the enforcing 
of the law requiring that adult women in laundries 
shall not work more than sixty hours in a week. Just 
as in the case of protected machinery, these difficulties 
might be partly removed through trade organization. 

“Nearly all laundry work is performed standing, 
and on heavy days, when the work is steady, except 
at lunch time, very few women get a chance to sit 
down during any part of the day. ‘The chief difference 
between laundry work and that of other factories is 
in the irregularity of the hours. A manufacturer 
knows more or less at the beginning of the week how 
much work his factory will have to do, and can usually 


Igo MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


distribute overtime, or engage or lay off extra girls, 
according to his knowledge. The laundryman can 
never estimate the amount of work to be done until 
the laundry bundles are actually on the premises. 
He can never tell when the hotels, restaurants, steam- 
boats, and all the small ‘hand’ laundries, whose 
family laundries he rough-dries, and whose collars 
and table and bed linen he finishes, will want their 
washing back. Hard as this is for the employer, it is 
still harder for the workers. The small hand laundry 
can seldom keep customers waiting longer than from 
Monday till Saturday. On this account, the steam 
laundry will be obliged to rush all of its work for the 
‘hand’ laundry through in one or two days. I found 
some steam laundries in which no work at all is done 
on Monday or Saturday, but in the busy season the 
place keeps running regularly on the other four days 
from seven in the morning till half past eleven and 
twelve at night. Very seldom is there any compen- 
sation for these long hours. Few of the laundries 
pay overtime. Of these, some dock the girls propor- 
tionately for every hour less than sixty a week they 
work. No laundries in which I worked, except one, 
give supper money. A plece-worker at least gets 
some advantage to counterbalance long hours. But 
the week worker not only lacks recompense for actual 
labor, but is often put to greater expense. 


WOMEN LAUNDRY WORKERS IN NEW YORK  I9QI 


“She does not know when her long day is coming, so 
she must buy her supper, when supper is waiting for 
her at home. She is often so tired that she must spend 
5 cents for carfare, instead of walking. Seven cents 
is a fair average spent upon supper — 2 cents for 
bread and 5 cents for sausage, cheese, or meat. If 
overtime is worked three nights a week, the girl is 
out of pocket 36 cents — not a small item in wages of 
$4.50 and $5 a week, where every penny counts. 
Often, also, she either has not extra money or she 
forgets to bring it. Then she has to share some one 
else’s lunch. The girls are always willing to divide, 
however slight their own provisions. I once saw a 
t-cent piece of cake shared by four girls. 

“There are two kinds of long hours: those due to 
bad systematizing o° laundry work, creating long waits 
between lots; and those due to very heavy work. In 
regard to the first kind, it must be said that the shirt 
starchers, who are the main sufferers from waiting for 
work, are the best paid, and hence are not as indignant 
at frequent overtime as the week workers are. Be- 
sides, though obliged to stay in the work-room, they 
are frequently seated throughout their waiting time, 
which sometimes lasts for four or five hours. Isaw one 
woman about to be confined, who sometimes starched 
shirts until two in the morning, after arriving at the 
laundry at half past seven on the morning before. 


IQ2 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


‘The other kind of long hours involves constant 
standing, and is most apt to occur in laundries where 
only mangle work is done. ‘These laundries do not 
tend to work late at night, but they more frequently 
violate the sixty-hour law than the others do. Work is 
almost absolutely steady. The women stand on their 
feet ten and twelve hours, with just half an hour or 
an hour for lunch, and work with extreme speed. 

“Tf your job is shaking the wrinkles out of towels 
and sheets, this in itself is violent exercise. ‘The air 
is hot and damp because you stand near the washers. 
You are hurried at a furious rate. When you finish 
one lot, you have to roll heavy baskets, and dump them 
upon your table, and then go on shaking and shaking 
again, only to do more heavy loading and dumping. 
One girl always had a headache late in the afternoon. 
After standing ten or twelve hours, there are few 
whose feet or backs do not ache. ‘The effect on the 
feet is perhaps the chief ground of complaint. Some 
merely wear rags about their feet, others put on old 
shoes or slippers, which they slit up in front and at 
the sides. The girls who press skirts by machine and 
those who do the body ironing have to press down on 
pedals in order to accomplish their tasks, and find this, 
as a rule, harder than standing still. An occasional 
worker, however, pronounces it a relief. But several 
I met had serious internal trouble which they claimed 


WOMEN LAUNDRY WORKERS IN NEW YORK 193 


began after they had started laundry work. Few 
laundries give holidays with pay. Some give half a 
day on the legal holidays. In the others, ‘shaking’ 
and ‘body ironing’ and all the hard, heavy processes 
of laundry work continue straight through Christ- 
mas day, straight through New Year’s day, straight 
through the Fourth of July, just as at other times. 

‘In recompense for these long hours of standing, the 
piece-worker often has fairly high payment financially. 
But the opposite is true of the week worker. In the 
down-town laundries, where the wage scale runs lower, 
the amount is usually inadequate for the barest 
need. 

“The payment in laundries is extremely varied. The 
wages of the majority of women I talked to in laundries 
amounted to between $8 and $4.50a week. But wages 
ranged from the highest exceptional instances in 
piece-work, in hand starching and in hand ironing, at 
$25 a week, for a few weeks in the year, down to $3 a 
week. 

“High wages generally involved long hours. For 
instance, in one laundry, young American women be- 
tween twenty and thirty were employed as hand 
starchers at piece-work. They made $10 a week, when 
times were slack, by working once or twice a week, 
from seven in the morning until eleven at night. In 


busy times they sometimes made $22 a week by work- 
oO 


194. MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


ing occasionally from seven o’clock one morn till two 
o’clock the following morning.! 

‘Although Italians, Russians, Irish, Polish, Ger- 
mans, Americans, and Swedes are employed in New 
York laundries, the greater part of the work is done by 
Irish and Italians. The Irish receive the higher 
prices, the Italians the lower prices. The best-paid 
work, the hand starching of shirts and collars and the 
hand ironing, is done by Irish women, by colored 
women, and by Italian and Jewish men. The actual 
process of hand starching may be learned in less than 
one hour. Speed in the work may be acquired in 
about ten days. On the other hand, to learn the nicer 
processes of the ill-paid work of feeding and folding 


1 Perhaps a better survey of the standard of wages for all depart- 
ments of laundry work in which women are employed can be given 
by the table below. By the word “‘standard”’ I mean the usual wage 
of a worker of average skill who has been at work in a laundry for 
a period of at least one year. 

Hand starching (shirts) POE SO ee eee 

Hand ironing ; 
Hand starching (collars) 
Hand washing . 


~ 
te) 


Machine ironing 

Feeders 

Folders 

Catchers PP err titt 
Machine starching (shirts) . 
Collar ironing i 
Machine starching (collars) 
Shakers 


PPannaan ©” 


uw wm 
Oo Oo 


WOMEN LAUNDRY WORKERS IN NEW YORK 195 


at the mangle — the passing of towels and napkins 
through the machine without turning in or wrinkling 
the edges, the passing of table-covers between cylin- 
ders in such a way that the work will never come out 
in a shape other than square — to learn these nicer 
processes requires from thirteen to fifteen days. The 
reason for the low wages listed for mangle work seems 
to lie only in nationality. Mangle work, as a rule, is 
done by Italians. In two laundries I found, working 
side by side with American and Irish girls, Italians, 
who were doing exactly the same work, and were paid 
less, solely because they were Italians. The employer 
said he never paid the Italians more than $4 a week. 

“In the next best-paid work after hand starching, 
the work of hand ironing, paying roughly from $8 to 
$18 a week, Italian women are practically never 
employed. 

‘The worst part of mangle work, the shaking, is 
done by young girls and by incapable older women of 
many nationalities. One of the ill-paid girls, who had 
$4.50 a week, gave $3.50 a week board to an aunt, 
who never let her delay payment a day. She had only 
$1 a week left for every other expense. This girl was 
‘keeping company’ with a longshoreman, who had 
as much as $25 in good weeks. She had been engaged 
to him, and had broken her engagement because he 
drank —‘he got so terribly drunk.’ But when I 


196 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


saw her she was in such despair with her low wage, 
her hard hours of standing, and only $5 a week ahead 
of her, that she was considering whether she should 
not swallow her well-founded terror of the misery his 
dissipation might bring upon them, and marry him, 
after all. 

‘The shakers are the worst paid and the hardest 
worked employees. The young girls expect to become 
folders and feeders. The older women are widows with 
children, or women with husbands sick or out of work 
or in some way incapacitated. Indeed, many of all 
these laundry workers, probably a larger proportion 
than in any other trade, are widows with children to 
support. ‘The laundry is the place,’ said one of the 
women, ‘for women with bum husbands, sick, drunk, 
or lazy.’ The lower the pay and the damper and 
darker the laundry, the older and worse off these 
women seem to be. 

‘The low wages and long hours of the great majority 
of the women workers, the gradual breaking and loss 
of the normal health of many lives through under- 
nourishment and physical strain, are, in my judgment, 
the most serious danger in the laundries. The loss 
of a finger, the maiming of a hand, even the mutila- 
tion of the poor girl who lost the use of both of her 
hands — the occasional casualties for a few girls in 
the laundries — are, though so much more salient, 


WOMEN LAUNDRY WORKERS IN NEW YORK 1097 


far less grave than the exhaustion and underpayment 
of the many. 

“This, then, is the situation in general for women 
workers in the commercial laundries. With respect 
to sanitation, the heat is excessive wherever ironing is 
done by machinery. Many of the rooms are full of 
steam. Some of the laundries have insanitary toilet 
and cloak rooms. With respect to danger of injury, 
in a large proportion of places there is unguarded or 
inadequately guarded machinery. In respect to hours 
of labor, these often extend over the sixty-hour limit 
in rush seasons. The hours are not only long, but 
irregular. A twelve to fourteen-hour working-day 
isnot infrequent. Ina few places closing on Mondays 
and Saturdays, or open for short hours on Mondays, 
the working-day runs up on occasions to seventeen 
hours. Almost all the laundry work is done standing. 
Wages for the majority of the workers are low.” 

The League’s conclusions in regard to legislation 
will be placed at the close of the following accounts 
of the laundries of the large New York hospitals and 
hotels, the first report being written by Miss Eliza- 
beth Howard Westwood, the second report by Miss 
Mary Alden Hopkins. 

II 

“‘ By a decision of the District Attorney, hotel and 

hospital laundries, provided they do no outside work, 


198 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


do not come under the jurisdiction of the Department 
of Labor. Women may work far beyond the sixty- 
hour limit on seven days of the week without any inter- 
ference on the part of the government. Nor is there 
any authority that can force hospitals and hotel 
keepers to guard their machinery. 

“While the hospitals did not, as a rule, exceed legal 
hours, were excellent as a rule in point of sanitation, 
and paid better wages than the commercial laundries 
to all but the more skilled workers, the machinery was 
adequately guarded in only one of the eight hospital 
laundries where I worked. 

“In some, the belt that transfers the power was left 
unscreened, to the danger of passing workers. In 
others the mangle guard was insufficient. In all the 
hospitals I heard of casualties. Fingers had been 
mashed. A hand had been mashed. An arm had 
been dragged out. Unguarded machinery was, of 
course, a striking inconsistency, more inexcusable in 
the hospitals than in hotels or in commercial laundries. 
For hospitals are not engaged in a gainful pursuit, 
regardless of all humanitarian considerations. On the 
contrary, they are not only avowedly philanthropic 
in aim, but are carried on solely in the cause of health. 

‘The living-in system prevails in the hospitals, and 
wages are paid partly in board and lodging. The 
laundry workers share the dormitories and dining 


WOMEN LAUNDRY WORKERS IN NEW YORK 199 


rooms of the other hospital employees. The dormi- 
tories were in every case furnished with comfortable 
beds, and chiffonniers or bureaus and adequate closet 
space were provided. Miss Hopkins and I did not 
sleep in, but had our beds assigned us, and used our 
dormitory rights merely for a cloak room. Here we 
lingered after hours to gossip, and here we often re- 
tired at noon to stretch out for a few minutes’ relaxa- 
tion of our aching muscles. The dormitories varied 
in size. Each hospital had several large and several 
small ones. In most cases these dormitories were on 
upper floors. In one they occupied the basement. 
Here, however, a wide sunken alley skirted the house 
wall and gave the windows a fairly good access to the 
air. 

“Tn all but two hospitals the food was excellent and 
the meals decently served. There were eggs and milk 
in abundance. The soups were delicious, the meats 
of fair quality and well cooked. There were plenty of 
vegetables, and the desserts were appetizing. We sat, 
as a rule, at long tables accommodating from ten to 
twenty. Sometimes we had table-cloths and napkins ; 
sometimes a white oil-cloth sufficed. We were waited 
on by maids. 

‘In most of the hospitals there is a fifteen or twenty- 
minute rest in the morning and in the afternoon, when 
milk, tea, and bread and butter are served. These 


200 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


oases of rest and nourishment were of extraordinary 
value to us in resisting fatigue. Their efficiency in 
keeping workers in condition is a humane and prac- 
tical feature of the laundries which should be sharply 
emphasized. 

“There was little variation in wages between the 
different grades of workers. Asa rule, only two prices 
obtained — one for all the manglers and plain ironers, 
another for the starchers and shirt and fancy ironers. 
In one laundry the wage fell as low as $10 a month. 
In the others it was $14 and $15 for the lower grade of 
work, and $16 and $20 for the higher. One of the 
laundries gave board, but no room, and here the 
universal price was $20 a month. 

‘As to hours, three of the hospitals had an eight-hour 
day; four had a nine-and-a-half-hour day. In one 
of these there was no work on Saturday afternoon, so 
that the weekly hours were forty-four. Another 
hospital worked seventy-two hours a week, with no 
recompense in the form of overtime pay. Generally 
the catchers at the mangles sat at their work. In one 
hospital the feeders also sat, using high stools. We 
wondered why this was not more often the custom. 
The difference in vigor in our own cases when we 
worked sitting was marked. Sitting, we escaped un- 
wearied ; standing all day left us numb with fatigue. 
In only one hospital was artificial light necessary in 


WOMEN LAUNDRY WORKERS IN NEW YORK 201 


the work-room. The rooms, as a rule, were well ven- 
tilated and the air fresh when one came into them. 

‘We often noticed that the workers in the hospital 
laundries were far less contented than those in the other 
classes of laundries. It was not surprising that they 
lacked enthusiasm for their work, for laundering is not 
an interesting task; but, with conditions far beyond 
any other type of laundry, it was strange that the 
hospital workers should be the most shifting, fault- 
finding, and dispirited laundresses we encountered. 
Part of this we attributed to the depressing effect of 
an atmosphere of sickness, part to the fact that work- 
ers living out are doubtless stimulated by the diversion 
of having a change of scene — of seeing at least two 
sets of people, and, above all, generally by some special 
sympathy and concern for their individual fortunes. 
In the last hospital laundry where we worked, one 
conducted by the Sisters of Charity, though the hours 
were long and the wages were only $10 a month, 
there was an exceptional air of cheerfulness and in- 
terest among the workers. ‘This was due to no special 
privileges of theirs, but to the contagious spirit of 
personal interest and kindness inherent in all the 
Sisters in charge. 

“The bitterness that characterized workers living 
in the hospitals was observed by Miss Hopkins among 
the laundry workers living in the hotels.” 


202 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


Il 


“The twenty-one hotels where we conducted our 
inquiry were extremely varied, ranging from a yellow 
brick house near the Haymarket, with red and blue 
ingrain carpets and old-fashioned bells that rang a 
gong when one twisted a knob, to the mosaic floors 
and the pale, shaded electric lights of the most costly 
establishments in New York. 

‘As to the sanitation of the twenty hotels visited, 
only six had their laundries above ground. All the 
others were in basements or in cellars. In most of 
these the ventilation was faulty and the air at times 
intolerably hot. It is a striking fact — showing what 
intelligent modern regulation can accomplish — that 
one laundry two stories underground in New York 
was so high-ceiled and the summer cold-air apparatus 
so complete that it was. comfortable even in the hot 
months. In most of the hotel laundries there were 
seats for the takers-off. Only three of the laundries 
had wet floors; only three were dirty; only one had 
an insanitary lavatory and toilet room. 

‘In regard to the danger of injury, of the nineteen 
mangles that I inspected for dangerous conditions, six 
were insufficiently protected. It is the custom in most 
hotels, when an article winds around the cylinder of 
the mangle, to pluck it off while the mangle is in 


WOMEN LAUNDRY WORKERS IN NEW YORK 203 


motion. The women sometimes climb up on the 
mangle and reach over, in imminent danger of becom- 
ing entangled either by their dresses catching or by 
pitching forward. The machinery of hotel laundries 
is even less carefully guarded than is that of a com- 
mercial laundry, and in some establishments is, be- 
sides, dangerously crowded. This was the case in 
one laundry in a hotel cellar. I worked here at the 
ironing-table on a consignment of suits from the navy- 
yard. As work came in from outside the hotel, the 
establishment should have been under the State in- 
spection. The rooms were narrow. There was a 
ventilating fan, placed very low, near where the girls 
hung their wraps, and as soon as I came in, they 
warned me that it caught up in its blades and de- 
stroyed anything that came near it. The belting 
of the machines was unboxed. A blue flame used 
sometimes to blow out four inches beyond the body- 
ironer, directly into the narrow space where the girls 
had to pass before it. In connection with the danger 
from machinery, danger from employees’ elevators 
should be noted. In one hotel I rode forty-four times 
on an elevator where the guard door was closed only 
once, though the car was often crowded, and twice I 
saw girls narrowly escape injury from catching their 
skirts on the landing doors and the latches. In another 
hotel, inexperienced elevator boys were broken in on 


204 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


dangerous cars containing signs that read: ‘This 
elevator shall not carry more than fifteen persons.” 
The cars were used, not only for people, but for trunks 
and heavy trucks of soiled linen. On one trip a car 
carried one of these enormous trucks, two trunks, and 
twelve girls; on another trip there were twenty-two 
people. 

“At eight of the hotels wages were paid partly in 
board and lodging. The money wages are given 


below :— 
Worke_Ers Livinc IN 
PER MONTH 
Ironers on flannels, stockings, and plain work . . . $22 
Ironers — skilled workers on family wash . . . . 25-30 
a ers ite ea) ait ea eee ea VR. bn So oT rr 
ALL Depinme|rs, 3.2 oak a 
WorKErS Livinc Out 
PER WEEK 
Tromers is ey ie iW) eit bs BE oe ey ager) we say an 
pmakere yee ey ian i ee Any Se ee 
Feeders?) 0.200 AU See Oe TS 
Boba 6 id iial L lee ee PRO RAAT Wg AST i ce 
Starchers (shirt), piece-work wages, average. 8 
Starchers (collars and cuffs) . . . . . . 15 and upward 


“The eight hotels varied widely in living conditions. 
The food was reasonably well cooked, but, like most 
hotel fare, monotonous, and destitute of fresh vege- 
tables and of sweets. One of the results of this is 
that the women spend a large part of their wages for 


WOMEN LAUNDRY WORKERS IN NEW YORK = 205 


fruit and other food to supplement their unsatis- 
factory meals. Only two hotels planned meals in- 
telligently. 

“The dining rooms were usually below the street- 
level, and varied in ventilation, crowding, and dis- 
order. In one the waiters were Greek immigrants, 
who were in their shirt-sleeves, wore ticking aprons 
and no collars, and were frequently dirty and unshaved. 
In the fourteen meals I had there, I sat down only 
once to a clean table. The coffee boilers along the 
side of the room would be boiling over and sending 
streams of water over the charwomen. The dirty 
dishes would be piled into large tin tubs with a clatter, 
and pulled out rasping over the floor. The char- 
women would beg the waiters to clear the tables, 
which looked as if garbage-cans had been emptied 
upon them. The steward could not enforce his 
authority. There was constant noise and disorder 
in the room. In another dining room, that of a 
pleasant, ramshackle old hotel near the river, where a 
breeze came into our laundry through sixteen windows, 
the employees were seated in one of the restaurant 
dining rooms after the noon rush hour was over, served 
by the regular waiters, and given attractive and varied 
fare and meat from the same cuts as the guests. 
‘They have respect for the help here,’ said one of the 
women. 


206 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


“The dormitories were, with one exception, on upper 
stories. One room in an expensive modern hotel, 
where there were twenty-seven beds, in tiers, was aired 
only by three windows on an inner court. The room 
looked fresh and pleasant because of its white paint 
and blue bedspreads; but it was badly ventilated, both 
by condition and because the girls would keep the 
windows closed for warmth. This was a frequent 
cause of poor ventilation in other dormitories and in 
work-rooms. 

“The hours of work were irregular, and varied in 
different places. In one large laundry I worked over 
ten hours for seven days in the week — more than 
seventy-two hours. About nine and a half hours 
seemed to be the usual day. Four hotels gave fifteen- 
minute rest pauses for tea, morning and afternoon; 
two gave them once a day. ‘These rests are of incal- 
culable relief. One hotel gave twenty-minute pauses, 
so that the hours were: 7.20 to 9; 9.20 to 11.25; 
12.30 to 2; 2.20 to closing time. This arrangement 
gave very short work periods, but during them the 
women were able to work vigorously; and they ac- 
complished an astounding amount. 

‘“ However, in most of the hotel laundries the women 
were tired all the time. They dragged themselves 
out of bed at the last possible minute. They lay in 
their beds at noon; they crawled into them again as 


WOMEN LAUNDRY WORKERS IN NEW YORK 207 


soon as the work was over in the evening. Some did 
not go out into the air for days ata time. The great- 
est suffering from any one physical cause came from 
feet. ‘Feet’ was the constant subject of conversa- 
tion. But thewomen had no idea what was the trouble 
with their feet, and, in many cases, accepted as inevi- 
table discomfort that could have been alleviated by 
foot-baths, care, plates, and proper shoes. Colds 
hung on endlessly. Sore throats were common. A 
girl who fed doilies into a mangle complained that con- 
stantly watching a moving apron made her eyes 
‘sore,’ so that she could not see distinctly and some- 
times fed in several doilies at a time without noticing 
it. The lack of air undoubtedly had a profound in- 
fluence on the women’s vigor. In the old hotel near 
the river, where the laundry had sixteen windows, the 
women were in capital health. 

“Tn general, the older hotels, in spite of their more 
insanitary dressing-rooms and less well-guarded ma- 
chines, were more considerate of their workers. But 
in one of the newer, more expensive hotels a sick girl 
is attended by the hotel physician, and is provided 
with soup, milk, etc. Her pay is not docked. She is 
treated with genuine sympathy. Here I once over- 
heard a woman telling the boss that she was ill and 
asking permission to go to the dormitory. He gave 
the permission without question. None of the women 


208 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


ever abused his kindness. The women here were in 
fairly good shape, except, it must be admitted, for the 
extreme fatigue which seems to sweep over almost all 
the laundry women, and which arises from their hours 
of standing. 

‘“T used to notice one girl who was as light on her 
feet as a kitten, and who seemed tireless; but every 
noon, as soon as she had finished her lunch, she would 
wrap herself up in a blanket and lie motionless for the 
whole period. One evening a woman stumbled into a 
dormitory, sat down on a trunk, pulled off her shoes 
and stockings, and, as she rubbed her swollen foot, 
cursed long and methodically all her circumstances — 
cursed the other workers who had held back work by 
their slowness; cursed the manager, who had asked 
of her extra work; cursed the dormitory and the 
laundry; cursed the whole world. At the first word 
of sympathy I offered her, she paused, and said with 
quiet truth, ‘Dear heart, we’re all tired.’ 

“ Here are my notes for one day : — 


When I went into the dormitory a little before half past seven, 
several of the girls were dragging themselves out of bed to dress. 
These went to work without breakfast, needing an extra half 
hour of rest more than they craved food. 

Two stayed in bed. One had an ulcerated tooth extracted 
the night before. I asked the other if she were sick. She 
groaned. ‘‘I’ll get up just as soon as the pains are gone out of 
my stomach.”” Within an hour she was in the laundry, carry- 


WOMEN LAUNDRY WORKERS IN NEW YORK 209 


ing armfuls of men’s working-suits to the drying-closet. She 
worked until half past eight that night. 

All the morning I stood beside Old Sallie, who kept asking, 
“What time is it now, dear?” because she could not see the 
clock. 

At noon, as we sat or lay on the beds in the dormitory, one of 
the girls said, ‘‘My God! I wish I could stay in bed this after- 
noon.” 

In the afternoon I stood beside Theresa, who kept repeating: 
“Tt is so long to work until half past five! If I could only go to 
bed at half past five!” 

I walked out to supper with a girl named Kate, who had 
sprained her ankle a week ago. I said, ‘“‘Hasn’t the doctor 
seen it?” Sheturnedon me. ‘‘My God! when do I get time 
to see a doctor?” She has a bad humor on her face, which is 
scarlet, and sometimes, in the morning, covered with fine white 
scale. She obtains relief by wiping her cheeks with the damp 
napkins she shakes. 

After supper I went up to the dormitory for a minute. Here 
I found a cousin of Theresa’s giving her some tea in bed, where 
I urged her to stay. The cousin shook her head. ‘Ah, na,” 
she said, ‘‘she must na’ give up; she’s new yet at the job — 
they wow’ na like her to be sick.”” Theresa arose and crawled 
back to the shaking-table, to work until seven o’clock. 

Throughout the evening I stood beside a girl, whose foot, 
when she walked, hurt her ‘‘’way to the top of her head.’”’ She 
said, “‘I’ve been on it ever since half past seven.” 

On my way back to the dormitory at half past eight, one of 
the girls told me how her arms ached and her legs ached. In 
the dormitory, the girl who had been in bed all day was sobbing 
and feverish. She had a sore throat, and was spitting blood. 
She had been lying there all day, with no care, except to have 
tea and toast brought to her by a maid. 


In looking back on this past week, it seems impossible it 
P 


210 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


could have been true. Watching these women has been like 
seeing animals tortured. 

‘Such a day of long hours as this generally follows 
some large festivity. The Hudson-Fulton celebra- 
tion, or the automobile show, or a great charity ball, 
or the dinner of an excellent sociological society are 
the occasions of increased hotel entertainment and a 
lavish use of beautiful table linen, to be dried and 
mangled and folded next day by the laundry girls 
underground. 

‘* All this pressure of extra work in the hotels here is 
produced, not by ill-willed persons who are consciously 
oppressive, — indeed, as will be seen, much of it was 
produced by sheer social good will and persons of most 
progessive intent, — but simply by the unregulated 
conditions of the laundries.” 


IV 

Such, then, is the account of what women workers 
give and what they receive in their industry in the 
commercial, hotel, and hospital laundries of New 
York. 

It cannot be said that the unfortunate features of 
the laundry conditions observed are due to the greed 
of employers. ‘These features seem to be due rather 
to lack of system and regulation. Financial failures 
in the New York laundry business are frequent. Even 


WOMEN LAUNDRY WORKERS IN NEW YORK 2II 


in the short time elapsing between the Department of 
Labor’s inspection of laundry machinery, early in 
February, and a reinspection of the twenty-six estab- 
lishments that had improperly guarded machinery, 
made in August by Miss Westwood, two out of these 
twenty-six firms had collapsed. Miss Westwood 
found some of the same unfortunate features that 
characterized commercial and hotel laundries in 
existence in hospital laundries, which are quite out- 
side trade. 

After the New York City Consumers’ League had 
received the inquirers’ report, it determined that the 
wisest and most effective course it could take for 
securing fairer terms for the laundry workers would 
be an effort for the passage of the following 
legislation :!— 

First: That an appropriation be made for additional factory 
inspectors. 

Second: That no woman be employed in any mechanical 
establishment, or factory, or laundry in this State for more than 
ten hours during any one day. 


Third: That the laundries of hotels and hospitals be placed 
under the jurisdiction of the Department of Labor. 


1Qne of the suggestions the inquirers had made, in regard to 
danger of injury, was the recommendation of the passage of the State 
Compensation Act, drafted by the joint conference of the Central 
Labor Bodies of the city of New York. This act became a law in 
September, 1910, but has since then (July 22, 1911) been declared 
unconstitutional. 


212 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


A New York State law now exists providing for 
proper sanitation and plumbing and clean drinking 
water for employees in factories and laundries.} 
A law exists requiring that work-rooms where steam is 
generated be so ventilated as to render the steam 
harmless, so far as is practicable.” 

A law exists requiring the provision of suitable 
seats for the use of female employees in factories and 
laundries; and this law should cover the installation 
of seats for great numbers of workers now standing.® 

The establishment of juster wages, as well as the 
observance of all these laws, and of the sixty-hour-a- 
week law, might be most practically furthered by the 
existence of a trade-union in the laundries, backed by 
stronger governmental provision for inspection. 


V 


It has been said that the unfortunate features 
observed in the laundry business in New York seemed 


1 Laws of New York, Chapter 229, section 1, paragraph 88. Be- 
came a law May 6, gto. 

2Laws of New York, Chapter 31 of the Consolidated Laws, as 
amended to July 1, 1909, paragraph 86. Inquirers’ suggestion: 
This law would be simpler to enforce if an amending clause required 
that, in laundries, washing be done in a separate room from the rest of 
the work. 

’Laws of New York, Chapter 3 of the Consolidated Laws, as 
amended to July 1, 1909, paragraph 86. 


WOMEN LAUNDRY WORKERS IN NEW YORK 213 


to be due primarily to lack of general regulation. 
In February 1911, the Laundrymen’s Association of 
New York State (President, Mr. J. A. Beatty), the 
Manhattan Laundrymen’s Association (President, 
Mr. J. A. Wallach), and the Brooklyn Laundrymen’s 
Association (President, Mr. Thomas Locken) con- 
ferred with the Consumers’ League, and asked to 
codperate with it in obtaining additional factory in- 
spection, the legal establishment of a ten-hour day 
in the trade, and the placing of hotel and hospital 
laundries under the jurisdiction of the State Labor 
laws. 

The League agreed to print on a published white 
list the names of the laundries conforming within a 
year to a common standard determined on at the 
conference. These are the main points agreed upon 
and endorsed. 


WHITE List STANDARD FOR LAUNDRIES 


Physical Conditions 


1. Wash rooms are either separated from other work-rooms 
or else adequately ventilated so that the presence of steam 
throughout the laundry is prevented. 

2. Work, lunch, and retiring rooms are apart from each 
other and conform in all respects to the present sanitary 
laws. 

3. All machinery is guarded. 

4. Proper drains under washing and Peete machines, so 
that there are no wet floors. 


224 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


5. Seats adjusted to the machines are provided for at the 


Collar ironer feeder. 
Collar ironer catcher. 
Collar dampener feeder. 
Collar dampener catcher. 
Collar straightener. 
Collar starcher feeder. 
Collar starcher catcher. 
Handkerchief flat-work feeder and catcher. 
Folders on small work. 
Collar shaper. 

Collar seam-dampener. 
Straight collar shaper. 


Seg Se a eee 


6. The ordinances of the city and laws of the State are 
obeyed in all particulars. 


Wages 


1. Equal pay is given for equal work irrespective of sex, 
and no woman who is eighteen years of age or over and who 
has had one year’s experience receives less than $6 a week. 
This standard includes piece-workers. 


Hours 


1. The normal working week does not exceed 54 hours, and 
on no day shall work continue after 9 P.M. 

2. When work is continued after 7 P.M. 20 minutes is 
allowed for supper and supper money is given. 

3. Half holidays in each week during two summer months. 

4. A vacation of not less than one week with pay is given 
during the summer season. 

5. All overtime work, beyond the 54 hours a week standard, 
is paid for. 

6. Wages paid and premises closed on the six legal holidays, 


WOMEN LAUNDRY WORKERS IN NEW YORK 215 


viz: Thanksgiving Day, Christmas and New Year’s Day, the 
Fourth of July, Decoration Day and Labor Day. 


The Laundrymen’s Association of New York State 
appeared with the Consumers’ League at Albany at 
the last legislative session, and repeatedly sent counsel 
to the capitol in support of a bill defining as a fac- 
tory any place where laundry work is done by 
mechanical power. The association’s support was 
able and determined. The bill has now passed both 
houses. 

Such responsible action as this on the part of the 
commercial laundry employers of the State of New 
York, Brooklyn, and Manhattan is in striking con- 
trast with the stand taken by the Oregon commercial 
laundry employers in the matter of laundry employees’ 
legal hours of industry. 


VI 


The constitutionality of the present New York law 
concerning the hours of labor of adult women in fac- 
tories, laundries, and mechanical establishments was 
virtually determined by the Federal decision in regard 
to the Oregon Ten-Hour Day Law for working-women. 

About three years ago the State of Oregon enacted 
a law of practically the same bearing as the New York 
law on the same subject, though superior in that it 
limited the hours of labor of adult women in mechanical 


216 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


establishments, factories, and laundries to ten hours 
during the twenty-four hours of any one day, where 
the New York law, of the same provision in other 
respects, limits the hours of labor of adult women to 
sixty in a week. 

The laundries and the State of Oregon agreed to 
carry a test case to the Federal Supreme Court to 
determine the new law’s constitutionality. 

Mr. Curt Muller of Oregon employed a working 
woman in his laundry for more than ten hours. In- 
formation was filed against him by an inspector. Mr. 
Muller’s trial resulted in a verdict against him, and a 
sentence of a ten-dollar fine. He appealed the case 
to the State Supreme Court of Oregon, which affirmed 
his conviction. Mr. Muller then appealed the case 
to the Federal Supreme Court. 

In the defence of the law before the Federal Su- 
preme Court, the National Consumers’ League had 
the good fortune to obtain, in codperation with the 
State of Oregon, the services of Louis D. Brandeis, 
the most distinguished services that could have been 
received, generously rendered as a gift. This fact 
alone may serve to indicate the vital character of the 
case, and the importance, for industrial justice in the 
future, of securing a favorable verdict for the laundry 
workers. 

The argument of Mr. Muller was that the Oregon 


WOMEN LAUNDRY WORKERS IN NEW YORK 217 


Ten-Hour Law was unconstitutional: First, because 
the statute attempted to prevent persons from making 
their own contracts, and thus violated the provisions 
of the Fourteenth Amendment.! Next, because the 
statute did not apply equally to all persons similarly 
situated and was class legislation. And, finally, 
because the statute was not a valid exercise of the 
police power; that is to say, there was no necessary 
or reasonable connection between the limitations de- 
scribed by the act and the public health and welfare. 

Mr. Brandeis’ brief replied that, first, the guaranty 
of freedom of contract was legally subject to such 
reasonable restraint of action as the State may impose 
in the exercise of the police power for the protection 
of the general health and welfare. It submitted that 
certain facts of common knowledge established con- 
clusively that there was reasonable ground for holding 
that to permit women in Oregon to work in a me- 
chanical establishment or factory or laundry more 
than ten hours in one day was dangerous to public 
welfare. 

These facts of common knowledge, collected by Miss 
Josephine Goldmark, the Publication Secretary of the 


1 “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the 
privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States: nor shall 
any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due 
process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal 
protection of the laws.” 


218 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


National Consumers’ League, were considered under 
two heads: first, that of American and foreign legis- 
lation restricting the hours of labor for women; and, 
second, the world’s experience, upon which the legisla- 
tion limiting the hours of labor for women is based. 

These facts comprised the governmental restric- 
tions of the number of hours employers may require 
women to labor, from twenty States of the United 
States, and from Great Britain, France, Switzerland, 
Austria, Holland, Italy, and Germany. The laws 
were followed by authoritative statements from over 
ninety reports of committees, bureaus of statistics, 
commissioners of hygiene, and government inspec- 
tors, both in this country and in all the civilized 
countries of Europe, asseverating that long hours of 
labor are dangerous for women, primarily because of 
their special physical organization. 

In reply to the second allegation, — that the act in 
question was class legislation, as it did not apply 
equally to all persons similarly situated, — the plain- 
tiff answered that the specific prohibition of more than 
ten hours’ work in a laundry was not an arbitrary 
discrimination against that trade; because the 
present character of the business and its special dan- 
gers of long hours afford strong reasons for providing a 
legal limitation of the hours of work in that industry 
as well as in manufacturing and mechanical estab- 


WOMEN LAUNDRY WORKERS IN NEW YORK 2I19Q 


lishments. Statements from industrial and medical 
authorities described conclusively the present charac- 
ter of the laundry business. 

Mr. Brandeis finally submitted that, in view of all 
these facts, the present Oregon statute was within 
Oregon’s police power, as its public health and welfare 
did require a legal limitation of the hours of women’s 
work in manufacturing and mechanical establishments 
and in laundries. 

Justice Brewer delivered the opinion of the Supreme 
Court of the United States. The case was won. 
Here are, in part, the words of the decision : — 


It may not be amiss in the present case, before examining 
the constitutional question, to notice the course of legislation 
as well as expressions of opinion from other judicial sources. 
In the brief filed by Mr. Brandeis . . . is a copious collection 
of all these matters. The .. . legislation and opinions re- 
ferred to ... are significant of a widespread belief that woman’s 
physical structure and the special functions she performs in 
consequence thereof, justify special legislation restricting or 
qualifying the conditions under which she should be permitted 
to toil. 

Constitutional questions, it is true, are not settled by even 
a consensus of present public opinion. ... At the same time, 
when a question of fact is debated and debatable, and the extent 
to which a special constitutional limitation goes is affected by 
the truth in respect to the fact, a widespread and long-continued 
belief concerning it is worthy of consideration. We take 
judicial cognizance of all matters of general knowledge. .. . 

That woman’s physical structure and the performance of 


220 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


maternal functions place her at a disadvantage in the struggle 
for subsistence is obvious. This is especially true when the 
burdens of motherhood are upon her. Even when they are not, 
by abundant testimony of the medical fraternity, continuance 
for a long time on her feet at work, repeating this from day to 
day, tends to injurious effects upon her body, and as healthy 
mothers are essential to vigorous offspring, the physical well- 
being of woman becomes an object of public interest and care 
in order to preserve the strength and vigor of the race. 


Nobody knowing the actual strain upon women 
laundry workers, no one who had seen them lying 
motionless and numb with fatigue at the end of a long 
day, or foregoing food itself for the sake of rest, could 
listen unmoved to these thrilling words of the greatest 
court of our country. 

The most eloquent characteristic of the Supreme 
Court’s affirmation was the fact that it was essentially 
founded simply upon clear, human truth, firmly and 
widely ascertained, founded on a respect, not only for 
the past, but for the future of the whole nation. 

Too often does one hear that ‘‘law has nothing to 
do with equity,” till one might believe that law was 
made for law’s sake, and not as a means of deliverance 
from injustice. “The end of litigation is justice. 
We believe that truth and justice are more sacred 
than any personal consideration.”’ Such was the 
conception of the office of the law expressed by Justice 
Brewer twenty years before, on his appointment to 


WOMEN LAUNDRY WORKERS IN NEW YORK 221 


the Supreme Bench. It was this conception of law 
that made the determination of the Oregon case a 
great decision in our country’s history. 

From time immemorial, women as well as men have 
been workers of the world. The vital feature of the 
statement that six million women are now gainfully 
employed in this country is not the “entrance” of 
multitudinous women into industry, but the fact that 
their industry, being now carried on in public instead 
of private, has been acknowledged and paid. This 
acknowledgment has led to the establishment of 
juster terms for women’s labor by the Federal Su- 
preme Court. Such an establishment, as the opinion 
of the court affirmed, is surely a distinct gain, not only 
for women, but for children, for men, for the race. 

When the preparation of food and clothing, the 
traditional household labor of women, passed in large 
measure from household fires and spinning-wheels 
into the canning factories and garment trades with the 
invention of machinery, women simply continued their 
traditional labor outside their houses instead of inside 
them.! The accounts of the laundry, the shirt-waist 
and the cloak making trades in New York seem to 
show that, where men and women engage in the same 
field of activity, their work is, by a natural division, 
not competitive or antagonistic, but complementary. 


1 Jane Addams, “Democracy and Social Ethics.” 


222 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET, 


Indeed, so little is it antagonistic that the very first 
spark that lit the fire of the largest strike of women that 
ever occurred in this country, the shirt-waist makers’ 
strike, was kindled by an offensive injustice to a man. 

The chronicles of what self-supporting women have 
given and received in their work in wage and in vital- 
ity, these working girls’ budgets obtained by the Con- 
sumers’ League, will not have told their story truly 
unless they have evoked with their narrative the pres- 
ence of that impersonal sense of right instinctive in the 
factory girls who go year after year to Albany to 
fight against the long Christmas season hours for the 
shop-girls, in the cloak makers in their effort to stop 
sweated home work, in the responsible common-sense 
of countless working women. So that the fact that six 
million women are now gainfully employed in this 
country may finally tend to secure wiser adjustments 
and fairer returns for the labor, not only of women, 
but of all the workers of the world. 


CHAPTER VII 


SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT AS APPLIED TO WOMEN’S 
WORK 


WITHIN the last thirty years a new method of con- 
ducting work, called Scientific Management, has been 
established in various businesses in the United States, 
including ‘‘machine shops and factories, steel work and 
paper mills, cotton mills and shoe shops, in bleacheries 
and dye works, in printing and bookbinding, in litho- 
graphing establishments, in the manufacture of type- 
writers and optical instruments, in constructing and 
engineering work — and to some extent — the manu- 
facturing departments of the Army and Navy.” 

Three of the enterprises to a greater or less degree 
reorganized by this new system in this country employ 
women workers. These establishments are a New 
Jersey cotton mill, a bleachery in Delaware, and a 
cloth finishing factory in New England. The reduc- 
tion of costs for the owning firms inaugurating Sci- 
entific Management has already received a wide 
publicity. It is the object of this account to present 
as clear a chronicle as has been obtainable of the 


1 Brief on behalf of Traffic Committee of Commercial Organizations 
of Atlantic Seaboard, p. 70. Louis D. Brandeis. . 


223 


224 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


effect the methods of Scientific Management have had 
on the fortunes of the workers — more especially on 
the hours, the wages, and the general health of the 
women workers in these houses who have so far expe- 
rienced its training." 

What, then, are the new principles of management 
which have been inaugurated? What is Scientific 
Management? ‘The expression may perhaps best be 
defined to lay readers by a lay writer by means of an 
outline of the growth of its working principles in this 
company — an outline traced as far as possible in the 
words of the engineers creating the system, whose 
courtesy in the matter is here gratefully acknowledged. 


I 


In 1881, Mr. Frederick W. Taylor, the widely rever- 
enced author of ‘‘The Art of Cutting Metals” and of 
‘Shop Management,” then a young man of 21, closed, 
in grave discouragement, a long, hard, and victorious 
contest of his conducted as gang boss of the machinists 


1 Fourteen years ago Scientific Management was applied to women’s 
work in a Rolling Machine Company in Massachusetts. Here the 
women’s hours were reduced from 1o} day to 83; their wages were 
increased about 100 per cent; and their output about 300 per cent. 
All the women had two days’ rest a month with pay. The work con- 
sisted in inspecting ball-bearings for bicycles. Their department of 
the business, however, closed twelve years ago. Accurate facts other 
than those listed concerning the workers’ experience as to hours, wages, 
and general health under Scientific Management are at this date too 
few to be valuable. 


SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT 225 


of the Midvale Steel Company in Pennsylvania. In 
the course of the last three years, as he narrates in his 
book ‘‘ Academic and Industrial Efficiency’: ! — 


By discharging workers, lowering the wages of the more 
stubborn men who refused to make any improvement, lowering 
the piece-work rate, and by other such methods, he (the writer) 
succeeded in very materially increasing the output of the ma- 
chines, in some cases doubling the output, and had been pro- 
moted from one gang boss-ship to another until he became the 
foreman of the shop.... For any right-minded man, however, 
this success is in no sense a recompense for the bitter relations 
which he is forced to maintain with all those around him. Life 
which is one continuous struggle with other men is hardly worth 
living.... Soon after being made foreman, therefore, he decided 
to make a determined effort in some way to change the system 
of management so that the interests of the workmen and the 
management should become the same instead of antagonistic. 

He therefore obtained the permission from Mr. William 
Sellers, the President of the Midvale Steel Company, to spend 
some money in a careful scientific study of the time required 
to do various kinds of work. 

Lack of information on the part of both workers and the 
management as to the quickest time in which a piece of work 
can be done constitutes what has been the most formidable 
obstacle in the path of all progress toward improved industrial 
conditions.... Every wasteful operation, every mistake, every 
useless move has to be paid for by somebody, and in the long 
run both the employer and the employee have to bear a propor- 
tionate share.... For each job there is the quickest time in 
which it can be done by a first-class man; this time may be 


1“ Academic and Industrial Efficiency,” by F. W. Taylor and 
Morris Llewellyn Cook. 


Q 


226 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


called the ‘Standard Time,” for the job.... Under all the 
ordinary systems this quickest time is more or less completely 
shrouded in mist. 


Through a period of about twelve years the sim- 
plest operations in the shop were now timed, observed, 
and studied by graduates from science courses, differ- 
ent university men, engaged by Mr. Taylor, until a 
general law had been discovered regarding the exertion 
of physical energy a first-class worker could employ 
‘and thrive under.”’ It was found that the worker’s 
resistance of fatigue in lifting and carrying the load 
depended, not on the amount of strength in terms of 
horse-power which he was obliged to exert to elevate 
and sustain the load, but on the proportion of his day 
spent in rest. For instance, a pig-iron handler, 
lifting and carrying pigs weighing g2 pounds each, 
could lift and carry 47 tons of iron in a day without 
undue fatigue if fifty-seven per cent of his working 
hours were spent in rest, and forty-three per cent 
were spent in work. If he lifted and put in place 
a number of pigs amounting to half that tonnage, 
he might work without undue fatigue for a greater 
part of the day. Under a certain far lighter load he 
could work without fatigue all day long, with no rest 
whatever. 

With accurate time-study as a basis, the ‘‘ quickest 
time’’ for each job is at all times in plain sight of both 


be han al a 


rr 
he” 





aa 


ae sone wetesihs ed =a 


re tt 
ae ae he Ba 


erates Bl 





riy 
i 


€ 








Sarg’ s 
oo 


faa ileal 


% » 
Nw ] 


OPERATION — WHEELBARROW I 





——aee F 





—— |__| —_| ——_| 
Department — Construction a 1.37 E37 15 
Men — Mike Flaherty a ae b 1.56 | 0.19 1 
c 1.82 | 0.26 
Materials — Sand requiring no | 
pickwaovyy. 2e BAP OE d 1.97 | 0.15 
Materials — Hard clay in bank . e 2.27 1 ©.36 | 


Implements — No. 3 _— shovel; 
Contractors’ wooden  wheel- 
barrow. ih 2.36 | 0.09 3 

Conditions — Day-work for a con- ; 

1.24 | 1.24 13 @! 

b 























tractor. By previous observation| a 
An average barrow load of sand is 
2.32 cu.ft. measuredincut . b 1.36 | 0.12 i 
An average barrow load of clay is 
2.15 cu. ft. measured in cut ¢ 1-50 | 0.23 et 
d 1.83 | 0.24 d | 
e 2.08 | 0.25 é 3 
f 2:23) \O.25 f 3 
2 a. 
A=! a8 
Time Complete Operations s | s3 (8 Eg 
ro) OU om 
fH He | Us 
min. | min. | min. }¢ 
eas y 
7 A.M. | Commenced loading sand . 
9.02 43 loads wheeled to a distance of 50 {t.| 122 122 4 
9.50 Picking hard clay. 48 | 
11.39 29 loads clay wheeled to a distance 
ob so fee cant of his an 109 
11.46 Picking clay again . 7 55 
12.01 4 loads clay wheeled to a distance 
of solft.l-. Par. YAR Bee 15 124 || 
301 











Norte.— Comparison of ‘ Detail’? with “Complete” operations 
other necessary delays. About the same quantity loose as at the ste 








AVATION. Date, March to, 189 


ime} Av. Ruel Op. | Time} Av. fio, Op. | Time | Av. 


ma | 1.52 12 a 1 t.60 II 
39 | 9.27 a’ | 1.81 13 
58 | 0.19 a’ 2.14 16 
7O | 0.12 a’ | 1.98 14 
Q2 | 0.22 
05 | 0.13 


123 | 1.23 13 


38 | 0.15 
60 | 0.22 
78 | 0.18 
05 | 0.27 
.23 | 0.18 
Lal 
S| Sp Bo]. 
& t= a AE & ES 
Detail Operations o | go ig Ba . 2 E 229 
: A t= a 
: S |FR Aa ZaS SA 
min, | min. | min. | min 
' A RE SE 2 ee ee eee ee 
. |a— Filling barrow withsand| 4 | 1.240] 0.094| 13.2 
5 — Starting 4 |0.182 
c — Wheeling full— so ft. 4 |0.225 0.450 
’ | d— Dumping & turning 4 |0.172 
> |e — Returning empty—soft.| 4 | 0.260 0.520 
f — Dropping barrow & start- 
ing to shovel 4 |0.162 
g— 2.241 
i— 
| com 
1 too 


1 ee 
m— : 
a’ — Filling barrow withclay| 4 | 1.948|0.144)| 13.5 





s that about 27 per cent of the total time was taken in rest and 
Observer: JAMES MONROE. 


Tress 





Pr ee A Oa 
? 
a « i 
: ae | 
x > ————— 
: , . 
a F 


= * 


| ie Aare ee 


; 
+ 










er | ppr.o] 8po.2 f 
bay 3201 ai Qodut soernomls tized alt totes) x 
veaMOhioramall erseialQiat fc came gq ‘ y 





SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT 227 


employers and workmen, and is reached with accuracy, 
precision, and speed.1 

Here is an account of the effect the result of this 
time-study and these tests in strength produced on the 
output and wage of a group of men at the Bethlehem 
Steel Co., whose work Mr. Taylor reorganized after 
that of the Midvale Steel Company : — 


The opening of the Spanish War found some 80,000 tons 
of pig-iron piled in small piles in an open field adjoining the 
Bethlehem Steel Company’s works. Prices for pig-iron had 
been so low that it could not be sold at a profit, and was there- 
fore stored. With the opening of the Spanish War the price 
of the pig-iron rose, and this large accumulation of iron was sold. 
The... steel company’s... pig-iron gang... consisted of about 
75 men... good average pig-iron handlers, under an excellent 
foreman.... A railroad switch was run out into the field, right 
along the edge of the piles of pig-iron. An inclined plane was 
placed against the side of a car, and each man picked up from 
his pile a pig of iron weighing about 92 pounds, walked up the 
inclined plank, and dropped it on the end of the car. 

We found that this gang were loading on the average of 
about 12} tons per man per day in this manner. We were 
surprised to find, after studying the matter, that a first-class pig- 
iron handler ought to handle between 47 and 48 tons per day, 
instead of 124 tons, which were being handled. 


1 The specialistic and detailed care necessary for practical and exact 
time-study may be indicated by the reproduction below of a method 
of record used by Mr. Sanford E. Thompson in timing wheelbarrow 
excavations. (Explanation. The letters a, b, c, etc., indicate ele- 
mentary units of the operation : ‘‘ Filling barrow” = (a); “starting” 
= (b); “ wheeling full’’ = (c), etc.) 


228 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


This task seemed so very large that we were obliged to go 
over our work several times before we were sure we were ab- 
solutely right... . The task which faced us as managers under 
the modern scientific plan. . . was . . . tosee that the 80,000 
tons of pig-iron were loaded on the cars at the rate of 47 tons 
per man per day in place of 12} tons. . . . It was further our 
duty to see that this work was done without bringing on a 
strike among the men, without any quarrel with the men, 
and to see that the men were happier and better contented with 
loading at the new rate of 47 tons than they were when loading 
at the old rate of 123 tons. 

The first step was the scientific selection of the workmen... . 
Under... scientific management . . . it is an inflexible rule to talk 
to and deal with only one man ata time, since we are not dealing 
with men in masses, but are trying to develop each individual 
man to his highest state of efficiency and prosperity. The 75 
men in the gang were carefully watched and studied for three 
or four days, at the end of which time we had picked out four 
men who were believed to be physically able to handle pig-iron 
at the rate of 47 tons per day. A careful study was then made 
of each of these men.... Finally one man was selected from 
among the four as the most likely man to start with. 


This man, who had been receiving $1.15 a day, 
agreed to follow for $1.85 a day the directions of the 
time-student, who had determined the proportion 
and intervals of rest necessary for the regular accom- 
plishment of the task, without overstrain or undue 
fatigue. The worker started to carry his accustomed 
load and at regular intervals was told by the time- 
student, observing the proper period for rest and 
work with a watch: “Now pick up a pig and 


LIBRARY 
OF THE 
WHIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS. 


IVINALVIN HLIIM AAAVIMOIUG AHL ONIGIAONUG JO GOHLATY MAN IAL 
., OUWIIUIBUA IILISNPUT,, [0 fisajLnog 





SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT 229 


walk. Now sit down and rest. Now, walk — now, 
rest, etc.” 


He walked when he was told to walk and rested when he 
was told to rest, and at half past five in the afternoon had his 
473 tons loaded on the car. And he practically never failed to 
work at this pace and to do the task that was set him during 
the three years that the writer was at Bethlehem. . . . Through- 
out this time, he averaged a little more than $1.85 a day; 
whereas he had never received more than $1.15 a day, which 
was the ruling wage at that time in Bethlehem. . . . One man 
after another was picked out and trained to handle pig-iron at 
the rate of 474 tons a day, until all of the pig-iron was handled 
at this rate, and all of this gang were receiving sixty per cent 
more wages than other men around them. 


A very brilliant and extended investigation con- 
cerning the elimination of waste of human energy 
and labor by motion-study has been made indepen- 
dently of Mr. Taylor by Mr. Frank Gilbreth, whose 
discoveries in the field have already cut down the 
effort of the labor of bricklaying two-thirds. The 
two accompanying photographs show what Scientific 
Management and motion-study did in one case to serve 
the worker by an orderly and convenient arrangement 
of his material. 

These extremely simple processes of bricklaying and 
carrying pig-iron have been selected as instances of 
the procedure of Scientific Management, because 
they reveal one of its most illuminating qualities. 


230 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


Scientific Management makes an art of all work. It 
gives the most primitive manual task its right dig- 
nity, and turns knowledge, science, and the powers of 
direction from the position of tyrants of labor to that 
of its servitors. 

Scientific Management, then, besides eliminating 
waste in human energy, or rather by way of eliminating 
this waste, eliminates waste in equipment, waste in 
machine power, and evolves through an extended plan- 
ning department such better appliances, such an im- 
proved programme of work and recording of individual 
work as has been only very imperfectly indicated here. 

For an instance of the elimination of waste in equip- 
ment the account of the saving effected for one es- 
tablishment by an efficient use of its belting may be 
narrated. This was the work of Mr. Harrington 
Emerson, widely known as a counselling engineer. 
In the ’70’s Mr. Emerson had become interested in the 
subject of Efficiency Engineering by his study of the 
successful conduct of the German Army during the 
Franco-Prussian War; and he has since then reor- 
ganized numerous large enterprises in accordance with 
the principles derived from his inquiry. Among these 
establishments was a machine shop where the belting ! 


‘had cost (for maintenance and renewals) at one of the main 
shops about $12,000 a year — or $1000 a month — and it was 


1“ Efficiency.” Harrington Emerson. 


SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT 231 


so poorly installed and supervised that there was an average of 
12 breakdowns every working-day, each involving more or less 
disorganization of the plant in its part or asa whole.” The 
workmen in charge of the belts now received directions as to 
their charge from a general foreman, who received directions 
from an efficiency engineer. This engineer had derived his 
general information on the subject from a man who had made 
a special study of belts for nine years. He laid down a few 
general rules, requiring accurate records of breakdown, repair, 
and installation, full authority and responsibility for the special 
worker on belts, a better grade of work in installation and better 
operation of the belts. Under this method ‘the number of 
breakdowns declined from 12 each working-day to an average 
of 2 a day, not one of them serious. . . and due to original de- 
fective installation, which it was impossible to remedy without 
unjustifiable expense. . . . The cost of maintaining belts fell 
from $1000 a month to $300 a month.” 


This elimination of waste of human power, and in 
connection with it the elimination of waste of equip- 
ment and of machine power, have, then, in the course 
of the last thirty years, been studied and applied in 
this country in the way roughly outlined by Mr. 
Taylor, Mr. Gilbreth, Mr. Gantt, Mr. Sanford Thomp- 
son, Mr. Barth, Mr. Cook, and Mr. Hathaway ; 
and in somewhat the same manner by Mr. Harring- 
ton Emerson, Mr. Edward Emerson, Mr. W. J. 
Power, Mr. Arion, Mr. Playfair, and Mr. Chipman. 
These engineers have developed methods which have 
made it possible for them to reorganize the various 
businesses mentioned which have consulted them, 


232 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


and to decrease their costs and increase their prof- 
its. It will be seen at once that the procedure 
of Scientific Management in determining by scien- 
tific analysis the rate of speed and the working 
conditions under which machine power and human 
energy can be at once most productively and con- 
tinuously employed, is really new, and differs radi- 
cally from former business management, however ably 
systematized. 

“But these,” said Mr. Taylor, in speaking of the 
methods of Scientific Management, ‘‘are incidents in 
the course of Scientific Management. Its great 
underlying purpose is the achievement of prosperity 
for the workers and for the employers.” Mr. Tay- 
lor’s definition of prosperity, given on another occa- 
sion, is one of the finest the present writer has ever 
heard. ‘‘By a man’s prosperity, I mean his best use 
of his highest powers.” 

It may be asked, after the efficiency of workers 
has been increased by scientific study, what provision 
is made by scientific study for their increased compen- 
sation. While Mr. Taylor was at the Bethlehem 
Steel Company, Mr. Henry L. Gantt, then engaged 
with him in reorganizing the Bethlehem Steel Works, 
first applied the Bonus and Task system of com- 
pensation, which may be described loosely as a 
premium paid if a certain predetermined amount be 


SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT 233 


accomplished in a certain time. Its general principles 
are these :* — 

1. “A scientific investigation in detail of each 
piece of work and the determination of the best 
method and the shortest time in which the work can 
be done.” 

2. ““A teacher capable of teaching the best 
methods and shortest time.” 

3. ‘‘ Reward for both teacher and pupil, when the 
latter is successful.”’ ? 


II 


About five years ago Mr. Gantt was consulted con- 
cerning the application of Scientific Management in a 
New England Cloth Finishing house. The installa- 
tion of the new system here began on the eve of a strike 
which the workers lost. The history of this strike 
and its causes is not a part of this account. Only 
these facts concerning it bear upon the present sub- 
ject. The strike started among the men folders, then 
folding 155 pieces of cloth a day for $10 a week on 
week wages, and asking for ten per cent increase of wage 
without increase of output. The women folders’ 


1“ Work, Wages and Profits,” pp. 110 to 111. H. L. Gantt. 

2 While the bonus system as a means of compensation has been 
used very often in connection with the Scientific Management, it must 
not, however, be supposed that this method of compensation is alone 
and in itself Scientific Management. In fact, as employed without 
Scientific Management, it is to be regarded with some apprehension. 


234 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


wage on lighter work was $7.50. As will be seen, this 
request was met by Scientific Management. The 
wage was increased far beyond ten per cent. The 
output was increased, both by improved mechanical 
methods, and by a standard of more expert work, to 
from 447 to 887 pieces a day. The engineers of Scien- 
tific Management had not on either one side or the 
other any part whatever in the strike. But un- 
doubtedly one of its contributing causes was a distrust 
aroused by the rumor that a new system of work was 
to be inaugurated. 

The Cloth Finishing establishment bleaches, 
starches, and calenders dimities, muslins, percales, 
and shirtings, and folds and wraps them for shipping. 
The factory has good light and good air and an excel- 
lent situation in open, lightly rolling country. About 
two hundred young women, Americans, Scotch, Eng- 
lish, and French-Canadians are now employed here 
on the bonus and task system, most of them whom I 
saw living with their families in very attractive houses 
in pleasant villages near. One or two were on the 
gloomy, muddy little streets of a French-Canadian 
mill town. ‘These girls, too, were in well-built houses 
and not living in crowded conditions. But all their 
surroundings were dingy and disagreeable. At the 
Cloth Finishing factory and both the other establish- 
ments, every opportunity for the fullest inquiry among 


SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT 235 


workers as to the result of the system for them was 
offered by the owning companies. Difficulties in the 
industry for the workers were frequently pointed out 
by managers; and the addresses and names of the 
less well-paid workers and those in the harder positions 
were supplied as freely as information about the more 
fortunate effects of the system. Both this firm and 
that of the cotton mill are anxious to obtain first- 
class work through first-class working conditions as 
rapidly as trade conditions will allow. 

The first process at which women are employed is 
that of keeping cloth running evenly through a tenter- 
ing machine. The machine holds on tenter hooks — 
the hooks of the metaphorical reference — the damp 
cloth brought from the process of bleaching, and rolls 
it through evenly into a drier, where it slips off. 
There are two kinds of tentering machines. At one 
kind two girls sit, each watching an edge of the cloth 
and keeping it straight on the tenter hooks, so it 
will feed evenly. The newer machines run in such a 
manner that one girl who may either stand or sit 
can watch both edges. Because of the nearness of 
the drying closet, the air would be hot and dry 
here but that outside air is driven in constantly 
by fans through pipes with vents opening close to 
the workers. 

The tentering machines used to run slowly. This 


236 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


slowness enhanced the natural monotony and weari- 
someness of the work. The girls used to receive wages 
of $6 a week, and to rest three-quarters of an hour 
in the morning and three-quarters of an hour in the 
afternoon, with the same period for dinner at noon in 
the middle of a ten-and-one-half hour day. After 
Scientific Management was introduced, the girls sat 
at the machine only an hour and twenty minutes at 
a time. They then had a twenty-minute rest, and 
these intervals of work and rest were continued through- 
out the day by an arrangement of spelling with 
“‘spare hands.’’ The machines were run at a more 
rapid rate than before. The girl’s task was set at 
watching 32,000 yards in a day; and if she achieved 
the bonus, as she did without any difficulty, she could 
earn $9 a week. The output of the tentering 
machines was increased about sixty per cent. | 
The girls at the tentering machines praised the bonus 
system eagerly. They said they could not bear to 
return to the former method of work; that now the 
work was easier and more interesting than before, 
and the payment and the hours were better. One of 
the ‘‘spare hands”’ showed me, as a memento of a new 
era at tenter-hooking machines, the written slip of 
paper the efficiency engineer had given to her, ex- 
plaining to her how to arrange the intervals of rest, 
and to start the “rest” with a different girl on each 


SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT 237 


Saturday —a five-hour day —so that the same 
girls would not have three intervals of rest every 
Saturday. 

But in another part of the factory the girls at the 
tentering machines had wished to lump their rest 
intervals and to take them altogether in fifty-minute 
periods in the middle of the morning and of the 
afternoon. Here the “‘spare hands” intervals at the 
machines fell awkwardly, and they were obliged to 
work for an unduly long time. The girls became ex- 
hausted with the monotony in these longer stretches of 
work ; and further wearied themselves by embroider- 
ing and sewing on fancy work in the long rest periods. 
Here the girls were much less contented than in the 
other departments.! 

Aiter the cloth is dry and passed through calender- 
ing machines where men are employed, it is run into 
yard lengths by a yarding machine or “hooker.” At 
the yarding machines the girls stand under the frame 
holding the wooden arms that measure off the cloth 
back and forth. The workers here used to earn $7.50 
a week. They watch the machine, mark defects in 
some kinds of cloth, by inserting slips of paper, stop 
the machine when the material runs out, and lift 


1 The work in this department was, besides, rather slack at the time 
of year when I visited the factory, and wages for some of these workers 
were $6 a week, as low as they had been before the bonus was in- 
troduced. 


238 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


the pile of measured cloth to a table where it is taken 
up by the cutters and folders and inspectors. 

After the bonus system was introduced at the 
machines where the heavier material is measured, the 
yarding machines were all elevated to small platforms, 
so that the pile when finished would be on a level with 
an adjacent table, and the worker need not lift and 
carry the heavy weight of cloth to the table, but could 
slide the work. The machine was run more rapidly. 
The task was increased to about 35,000 yards, or from 
about 155 pieces to about 610. The wage with 
the bonus was now about $10 on full time, and the 
hours were lessened 45 minutes, as at the tentering 
machines. 

The worker stops the yarding machine by throwing 
her weight on her right foot, on a pedal to the right. 
The girls interviewed said they did not feel this as a 
strain, as there was a knack in doing it easily. On 
consulting a neighborhood physician it was found that 
within the last ten years, however, several women, both 
at the yarding and tentering machines, had strained 
themselves, probably by the tread at the yarding 
machine and by the slightly twisted seated position 
the older tentering machines necessitated. The num- 
ber of these cases traceable to any one process of work 
had not increased under the new system. The whole 
number of these cases in the factory had, on the other 


LIBRARY . 
OF THE 
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS. 





Courtesy of ‘Industrial Engineering ”’ 


THE UsuaAL METHOD OF PROVIDING THE BRICKLAYER 
WITH MATERIAL 


SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT 239 


hand, either decreased under the new system, or else 
had not come under this doctor’s care. He believed, 
however, that there was a reduction of the cases, 
and that this reduction was attributable to the better 
general health achieved by shorter hours, better 
ventilation, and better working conditions and 
appliances, 

The increased task at the yarding machine seems to 
have increased the danger of accidents. A knife ex- 
tends from the side of the machine; and when the 
girl’s attention is concentrated on her work, she some- 
times puts her fingers too near the blade, and cuts 
them, though no instance was known here of the loss 
of a finger or of serious injury. 

The girls stand all day at the yarding machine and 
at most of the succeeding processes of preparation. 
These are various arrangements of inspecting, count- 
ing yards, folding in “book folds,’ of doubled-over 
material, or ‘‘long folds”’ of the full width, ticketing 
and stamping, tying selvages together with silk thread, 
or tying them to wrapping paper by means of a little 
instrument called a knot-tier — this process is called 
knotting — tying with ribbons, pasting on strips of 
silver tissue ribbon, further ticketing and stamping, 
and running the sets of tickets indicating the several 
yards in each piece through an adding machine, which 
then produces on a stamped card the total number of 


240 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


yards in each consignment, before it is finally rushed 
away for shipment. 

The process of inspection is different for different 
qualities of material. Before the material is bleached, 
the number of yards and the character of treatment 
for each piece are specified on stamped orders issued 
from the planning room and sent with the cloth 
through the processes of production. It may as well 
be said here, that several girls have been promoted from 
manual work to work in this planning room, where they 
stamp orders, on a bonus at different rates, giving them 
a wage of about $10 a week in full time on office 
hours of 8 hours a day. 

The inspector receiving the bales from the yarding 
machines now counts off the number of yards and cuts 
the bale in accordance with these directions. Some 
material she inspects yard by yard for imperfections 
and dirt. After marking the yards on the cut piece, 
she sends it on to the folder if it is clean, and if it is 
spotted, to girls who wash out the spots and press the 
cloth.2, On other material, imperfections are marked 
by the girl at the yarding machine, by the insertion 


1 The girl who directs them and issues the orders receives a bonus 
for every stamper earning a bonus and earns on full time from $12 
to $15. 

2 These girls are not employed under the bonus and task system. 
But it is interesting to observe that they may either sit or stand to 
iron, as they prefer. 


SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT 241 


of slips of paper. As the inspector has less to do 
on these pieces, she not only counts and cuts, but 
folds them. 

Before the introduction of the bonus system, one 
girl used to fold, inspect, and ticket. She used also to 
carry her material from a table near the yarding ma- 
chine. Boys now bring the material except where at 
the yarding machines for heavier stuffs it is pushed 
along the table. The hours, as for almost all of the 
bonus workers, have been shortened by 45 minutes. 
The wages which were $7.50 a week are now 
between $10 and $11 on full time. Almost all the 
workers here said they greatly preferred the bonus 
system and would greatly dislike to return to other 
work. 

But in dealing with the heavier materials the work 
was tiring, and more tiring under the new system 
than before, as the number of pieces lifted had been 
increased. It was said while there was every intention 
of fairness on the part of the management in arranging 
the work, it was sometimes not evenly distributed in 
slack times, the same girls being laid off repeatedly and 
the same girls chosen to work repeatedly instead of in 
alternation. 

In the further processes of folding, some of the work 
and the lifting to the piles of the sheer, book-folded 


stuff is light, but requires great deftness; other parts 
R 


242 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


of the work and the lifting to the piles are heavier. 
The wage before the bonus was introduced was $7.50 
a week, and with the bonus rose to $11 a week, in full 
time. As with the inspectors, the work was now 
brought to the folders, and the hours were shortened 
by 45 minutes. Here there was great variation in the 
account of the system. 

One of the folders on light work, a sateen skil- 
ful young woman, who had folded 155 pieces a day 
before, and now folded 887, could run far beyond her 
task without exhaustion and earn as muchas $15 a 
week. She and some of the expert workers paused in 
the middle of the morning for 10 or 15 minutes’ rest 
and ate some fruit or other light refreshment, and 
sometimes took another such rest in the afternoon. 

Another strong worker, employed on heavy ma- 
terial, though she liked the bonus system, and said 
“it couldn’t be better,’ had remained at work at 
about the same wages as before, because she was a 
little ahead of the others before and earned $8 a 
week ; and now, as there was hardly more than enough 
of her kind of work to occupy her for more than four 
days a week, she still earned about $8. 

One folder was made very nervous by a constant 
fear that she would not earn her bonus. She always 


1 The men folders at the heaviest work here now receive with the 
bonus from $14 to $17 a week. 


SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT 243 


did complete the necessary amount; but when the sys- 
tem was first introduced, she had been sleepless night 
after night. Though this sleeplessness had passed away, 
she still took a nerve tonic to brace her through her 
work ; and this was the case with another folder. The 
mothersof both these girls urged them to return to week 
work. But this was of poor quality —odds and ends— 
and the girls disliked it, and persisted in the new system. 

In tying ribbons around the bolts of material, the 
girls sit at work. Their wages had been $1 a day 
for tying ribbons around 600 pieces; and now, on a 
bonus for 1200 pieces, 1s at times for quick workers, 
as high as $11. But the ribbon tying was not 
steady work. It is applied to only some of the ma- 
terial, and the task and bonus here are intermittent. 
The girls who knot, or run silk threads through the 
selvages, paste on tinsel ribbon, and wrap are younger 
than the other workers. Their wages before had been 
from $5.80 to $6 a week. Now they are in some 
cases over $8; in others about $7; in others about 
$6. The work reaches them in better condition 
than before. They said it was more interesting, and 
the chief difficulty was in lifting occasionally a greater 
number of heavy pieces in piling. Seats were pro- 
vided for these workers except for those at tinselling ; 
and if they found they were able to complete the task 
easily, they sat at the work. At the heavier work, the 


244 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


girl at yarding, the folder, knotter, and ticketer, all 
worked tandem, and if the girl at yarding loses her 
bonus, all the girls lose the bonus. 

In the last process of stamping tickets and ticketing, 
the girls work without one superfluous motion, with a 
deftness very attractive to see; and both here and 
at book folding justify the claim made by Scientific 
Management that speed is a function of quality. The 
wages here had been $6 before, and were now in 
full time from $9 to $10. As the task before had 
been combined with various other processes, it was, as 
in other cases, impossible to determine how much the 
work of each worker had been increased. ‘The present 
task was that of ticketing 39 bundles of 5 pieces each 
hourly, with different rates for different amounts of 
tickets, and was not considered at all a strain. But 
at the ticketing connected with the adding machines 
the work was not differentiated so carefully. More of 
the heavy work came to these ticketers, and the lifting 
was sometimes too exhausting. But the work was 
better than in former times, and the wages of from $9 
to $10 were thought just, if a higher rate had been 
added for the heavier work here. 


III 


All this work described at the tenter hooking, the 
yarding, the folding, inspection, and ticketing, was of a 


SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT 245 


different character from that carried on under the bonus 
and task system in a large room where sheets and pillow- 
cases were manufactured. ‘This work afforded the only 
instance of an application of Scientific Management to 
the processes involved in the great needle trades and 
was, on that account, of special interest. 

The white cloth is brought on trucks to the girls, who 
tear it into lengths, in accordance with written orders 
received with each consignment. They snip the cloth 
with scissors, place the cut against the edge of an 
upright knife, set at a convenient height on a bench, 
and pull the two sides of the cloth so that the knife 
tears through evenly to the end; then they stamp 
the material, fold it over, and place it on a truck to be 
carried to the machine sewer. The weekly wages 
before the bonus was introduced had been $5.98 and 
were now with the bonus $6.75, though workers some- 
times tore more than the 1190 sheets required by the 
task and made from $7 to $7.50 by a week’s work. 
The quick workers occasionally stopped for 10 or 12 
minutes in the morning and ate a light lunch. The 
task was severe for the muscles of the hand and fore- 
arm, and apt to cause swollen fingers and strained 
wrists, though the girls bound their wrists to prevent 
this. All the work was done standing. The loosened 
starch flying here was annoying, both to the tearers 
and the girls at the sewing-machines. 


246 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


Since the time of the inquiry, all the girls engaged in 
tearing have been relieved and transferred to other posi- 
tions, and the work of tearing has been done by men. 

Here the sheets are turned back and hemmed by 
workers who sew tandem, one girl finishing the broader 
hem and the other the narrower one, their task being 
620 sheets a day. The girls at the machines formerly 
earned $7.50, and now earn with the machine set 
at the higher rate of speed from $8 to $11. They 
stop for 10 minutes in the morning, and clean the 
machines and clear away the litter around them. 
The sewing and stooping are monotonous, and the 
work on bonus here is apt to cause nervousness, be- 
cause of uncertainty occasioned by frequent breakages 
in the machines.} 

There is a room at one side of the department, 
where the girls were to rest when they had completed 
their tasks. But the present foreman, not understand- 
ing the system, comes to the rest room and hurries 
them out again, even after the 620 sheets are finished.’ 


1A worker does not lose her regular wage if she is stopped by a 
breakage. Her time-card is altered. And she has credit on a time 
basis for the period while the machine is not running. A breakage 
in the first machine of a tandem pair stops both sewers. But a break- 
age in the second means that work piles up for the second sewer, and 
unless she makes it up, she will prevent her companion from earning 
a bonus, though not a time wage. 

2 The management, on learning of this, said the practice would be 
stopped at once. 


SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT 247 


One of the girls in the department, an Italian girl, who 
used to run far beyond the task at the machine, had 
fallen ill under the strain of the work, or at least left 
the factory looking extremely ill and saying that she 
had broken down and could not remain. Another 
unfortunate result of the speed at the sewing-machines 
is that the girls are more apt than before to run the 
needles through their fingers. 

The folding in this department is also exhausting, 
and the management is trying to find a better system 
of conducting this process than that now employed. 
The folders here stoop and pick up the sheets and 
fold them lengthwise and crosswise. The task is 
1200 a day; and the wage with the bonus comes to 
between $6 and $7 a week. But after the bonus 
is earned, payment is, for some reason, not suitably 
provided on work beyond the task. One worker said 
she used to fold one or two pieces above the amount 
without any objection, but lately she had folded as 
many as 200 beyond, without payment. 

From the folders the sheets are carried away to a 
mangle, where they are folded over again by young 
girls. The work is light, but the payment of $5.80 
to $6 for 770 pieces an hour is low. The mangle 
is well guarded. By an excellent arrangement here, 
the material is piled on a small elevator, so that the 
girl at the mangle does not have to stoop or lift, but 


248 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


easily adjusts the elevator, so that she can feed the 
mangle from the pile at her convenience. The girl 
at a mangle can earn from $7 to $8 and is not tired 
in any way by her work. 

The final stamping and wrapping in paper and tying 
with cord are done at a rate of 25 pieces an hour, for 
a wage coming to $6 a week, by young girls; and the 
situation is otherwise about the same as with the other 
wrappers. 

Except at the mangle, the operation of the sheet 
and pillow-case factory was unsatisfactory to the 
management, who had begun to study the department 
for reorganization just before the time of the inquiry. 
Competition had so depressed the price of the manu- 
facture of sheets that the commission men, for whom 
these processes described were executed, paid 25 cents 
a dozen sheets for the work. This does not, of course, 
include the initial cost of the material. It means, 
however, that all of the following kinds of machine 
tending and manual labor on a sheet were to be 
done for 23 cents :— 


Tearing; (men workers) 
Hemming; (women workers) 
Folding; (women workers) 
Mangling; (women workers) 
Book-folding; (women workers) 
Wrapping; (women workers) 
Ticketing; (women workers) 


SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT 249 


The management lost in its payment for labor here, 
and yet felt the work was too hard for its workers, and 
should be changed. Alterations in the rest periods 
are now being introduced. For the girls the system 
of operation at the time of the inquiry in the sheet 
and pillow-case factory, except on the mangle, was 
undoubtedly more exhausting than the old method, 
though their wages had been increased and their 
hours shortened. 

In general in the Cloth Finishing establishment 
Scientific Management had increased wages. 

It had shortened hours. 

In regard to health and fatigue, outside the sheet 
factory, when the general vague impression that the 
new system was more exhausting than the other was 
sifted down, the grist of fact remaining was small, and 
consisted of the instances mentioned. About forty 
young women told me their experience of the work. 
Sometimes their mothers and their fathers talked with 
me about it. Every one whose health had suffered 
under the new task had been exhausted by some old 
difficulty which had remained unremedied. This 
point will be considered in relation to the industry 
of the other women workers in the other houses 
after the accounts of their experience of Scientific 
Management. 


250 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


LV. : 

There are over 600 workers in the New Jersey 
cotton mill. Of these 188 are women. One hundred 
and ten of the women workers are at present engaged 
under the bonus and task system, though the manage- 
ment expects to employ eventually under this system 
all of its workers, and is in this establishment mark- 
edly in sympathy with Scientific Management. The 
mill is a large, well-lighted brick structure, with fields 
around it, and another factory on one side, on the 
outskirts of a factory town. The establishment is 
composed of a larger and newer well-ventilated build- 
ing, with washed air blown through the work-rooms ; 
and an older building, where the part of the work is 
carried on which necessitates both heat and dampness 
to prevent the threads from breaking. . 

The cotton, which is of extremely fine quality, comes 
into the picker building in great bales from our 
Southern sea-coast and from Egypt. It is fed into 
the first of a series of cleaners, from the last of which it 
issues in a long, flat sheet, to go through the processes 
of carding, combing, drawing, and making into roving. 
The carding product consists of a very delicate web, 
which, after being run through a trumpet and between 
rollers, forms a ‘‘sliver”’ of the size of two of one’s 
fingers, from which it issues in a long strand. This 
strand or sliver is threaded into a machine with other 


SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT 251 


ends of slivers and rolled out again in one stronger 
strand; and this doubling and drawing process is 
innumerably repeated, till the final roving is fed into a 
machine that gives it a twist once in an inch and winds 
it on a bobbin. There are three kinds or stages of 
twisting and winding roving on these machines, and 
at the last, the ‘‘speeders,’’ women are employed. 

Up to this point all the workers have been men. 
These speeders are in the carding rooms, which are 
large and high, filled with great belts geared from 
above, anc machines placed in long lanes, where the 
operatives stand and walk at their work. Humidify- 
ing pipes pass along the room, with spray issuing 
from theirvents. The lint fibres are constantly brushed 
and wiped up by the workers, but there is still con- 
siderable lint in the air. The heat, the whir of the 
machines, the heaviness of the atmosphere, and the 
lint are at first overpowering to a visitor. While 
many of the girls say that they grow accustomed to 
these conditions, others cannot work under them, and 
go away after a few days’ or sometimes a few hours’ 
trial. 


1“The cotton as it grows in the field becomes more or less filled 
with blown dust. ... Lint is given off in all processes up to and 
including spinning. ... The only practical way to keep down 
the dust in all of these operations is by frequent sweeping and mopping 
the floor and wiping off the machinery.” Report on Condition of 
Women and Child Wage-earners in the United States, Vol. I, p. 365. 


252 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


The speeders stand at one end of a long row of 160 
bobbins and watch for a break in the parallel lines of 
160 threads, and twist the two ends together when this 
occurs. The greater number of the speeders used to 
earn $6 a week. But two or three women, on piece- 
work, earned about $9 and did nearly twice as 
much as the other workers. The speeders had helpers 
who used to assist them to thread the back of the ma- 
chine and to remove and place the bobbins in front. 
The change or ‘‘doff’’ occupied about 20 minutes. It 
generally occurred five times in the day of the better 
worker and thus consumed an hour and forty minutes 
of her working time. The hours in the cotton mill 
are ten and a half a day with five and a half on Satur- 
day, — 58 hours a week. 

In order to ascertain the proper task for the speed- 
ers, a time-study was made of the work of one of the 
abler workers, who may be called Mrs. MacDermott, 
a strong and skilful Scotch woman, who had been em- 


“What degree of moisture is safely permissible from the stand- 
point of the operatives’ health is an unsettled question. ... When 
the operative after a day’s work in a humid and relaxing atmosphere 
goes into one relatively drier, the assault on the delicate membrane of 
the air-passages is sharp. The effect of these changes is greatly to 
lower the vital resistance and make the worker especially susceptible 
to pulmonary, bronchial, or catarrhal affections. It is very possible 
that the dust and lint present in the mill have been credited with 
effects which are due in part to these atmospheric conditions.” 
Report on Condition of Women and Child Wage-earners in the United 
States. Vol. I, p. 362. 


SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT 253 


ployed at speeding in the mill for 14 years. Mrs. Mac- 
Dermott was employed to teach the other speeders 
how to accomplish the same amount in the same time. 
The girls now thread the back of the machines with 
her help. Mrs. MacDermott, the speeder tender 
herself, and the doff boys, all working together, re- 
move the bobbins and fill the frame, thus accomplish- 
ing the change in 7 minutes instead of 20 minutes. 
The girls are paid, while learning better methods from 
Mrs. MacDermott, at their old rate of a dollar a day. 
If they accomplish the task allotted, they receive a 
dollar a week more flat-rate, a bonus equivalent to a 
few cents a pound on each pound received by the 
management; and this brings the wage to $1.65 a day, 
or between $8 and $10 a week. The work tires the 
girls no more than it did before. They receive about 
thirty per cent more wages, and the management re- 
ceives from the speeders nearly twice as great an out- 
put as before. Mrs. MacDermott’s wage as a teacher 
has been raised to $12. 

From the speeders, the doff boys send the roving — 
called fine roving in the mill, because the other 
rovings in preceding operations are coarser — upstairs 
in the older building to the spinners. Spinning is a 
more difficult task than speeding. ‘Two rovings are 
here twisted together by the machines. The spinners 
have 104 bobbins on one side of a frame, and watch 


254 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


for breakage, and change the bobbins on three frames, 
or six ‘‘sides.”’ Spinners formerly worked at piece- 
work rates and by watching eight sides, and fre- 
quently doing the work very imperfectly, would earn 
about $9. After a time-study was taken, the task 
was set at six sides, and doffs as called for by a sched- 
ule. With the bonus the girls’ weekly wage comes to 
about $10. In the spinning department there is a 
school for spinners. The heads receive a dollar for 
every graduate who learns to achieve the task and 
bonus. 

The yarn is carried from the spinners to the spool- 
ers, and wound from bobbins to spools for conven- 
ience in handling. The work of the spool tenders 
seemed to the present writer to be the severest work 
for women in this cotton mill. The bobbins run out 
very rapidly, and require constant change. The girls 
watch the thread for breakages just as at the other 
machines. In replacing the bobbins and fastening the 
broken threads with a knot tier, the girls have to 
stoop down almost to the floor. Before the time- 
study was taken, the girls were watching 75 bobbins, 
hurrying up and down the sides, bending up and down 
perpetually at this work. Some of the spool tenders 
had $6 a week on piece-work; others, more expe- 
rienced workers, were able toearn $10.50 at piece-work, 
although the work was frequently unsatisfactory and 


SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT 255 


had loose ends. A little Italian girl, who may be called 
Lucia, an extremely rapid worker, used to run wildly 
from one end of the frame to the other, and in the 
summer-time fainted several times at her work from 
exhaustion. A time-study was taken from the work 
of a very deft young Polish girl, and from Lucia. 
The other spoolers were taught to work with the same 
rapidity, and were soon able to earn with the bonus 
and the work done beyond the task a sum which 
brought their wage up to nearly $12 a week. 

This lasted for about two months. But the work 
was so improperly done and the spools were so full of 
loose and untied ends, etc., that the number of spin- 
dles to be tended was reduced from 75 to 50, and the 
machines were run at a lower rate of speed. The task 
was changed accordingly so that the worker’s wage, 
simply with the bonus, was as it had been before. 
But she was unable to overrun the task as far as she 
had formerly. By the workers’ constant attention, 
the work now improved in quality, but the limit of 
quantity, was, of course, lower. The wages with the 
bonus dropped back to a smaller excess, or $1.47 a day. 
This was, of course, disheartening, though Lucia said 
it was better, she was so much less tired by the work 
than she had been before. But the work is still un- 
doubtedly very wearying and difficult. The spoolers 
still give incessant attention to their work, still do 


256 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


their best, and yet make by close application far less 
than they had grown accustomed to expect whether 
justly or unjustly.1 The task is now 12 doffs a day — 
each doff requiring a change of 208 bobbins. So that 
in changing bobbins alone the girls have to stoop 
down over 2000 times a day, without counting all the 
stooping for knot tying, which the forewoman said 
would about equal the labor of bending and working 
at bobbin changing. She had talked with the manage- 
ment about having the frames raised, so as to eliminate 
this exhausting process of stooping to work for the 
spoolers. ‘This change had been made in two machines 
and will doubtless be extended.” 

At the further twisting and plying of the cotton, the 
processes succeeding the spooling, men are employed. 
From these the yarn goes to the winding room in the 
newer building, where better air and temperature are 
possible than in the carding and spinning rooms. The 
winding room is large and light. At one side stand 
the warps, very tall and interesting to see, with 
their lines of delicate filament and high tiers of bob- 


1 Besides, work had lately been slack, and this had further de- 
creased the wages. 

2 Since visiting the New Jersey cotton mill, the present writer has 
seen spool tenders at work at a machine requiring no stooping, and 
provided with a board below the bobbins, placed at such a height 
that the worker can relieve her position while standing by resting 
her weight against the board, above one knee and then above the 
other. 


SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT 257 


bins. In the winding room girls are engaged at 
machines which wind the yarn from spools back to 
bobbins for filling in the looms and also for the 
warp. 

In winding the filling bobbins the girls watch the 
thread from eighteen bobbins, and replace and stop 
bobbins by pressing on foot pedals. The worker had 
made from $7 to $7.50 a week before a time-study 
was taken and the task increased. She can now make 
from $8 to $10.50 a week. The work is lightened 
for her by the fact that whereas she formerly placed 
the bobbins on the warp, doffers now do this for her. 
But the increased stamping of the pedals made neces- 
sary by the larger task is very tiring. 

There are no women on bonus in the weave room, 
where the warp and the filling are now carried. After 
the woven product comes from the weaving room — 
an extremely heavy, strong stuff of the highest grade, 
used for filter cloth and automobile tires — it is hung 
in a large finishing room in the newer building over a 
glass screen lighted with sixteen electric lights which 
shine through the texture of the material and reveal 
its slightest defect. After it has been rolled over the 
screen, it is sent to girls who remedy these defects by 
needlework. 

It is again run over the lighted screen by the in- 


spectors and returned to the girls if there are still 
ae 


258 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


defects. Before the bonus system was applied, the 
girls had made $5.04 a week, and finished about 5 
rolls a day. After the system was applied, they made 
from $7 to $8 and did sometimes 10 and sometimes 
12 rolls a day. But, in spite of the greatest care 
on Mr. Gantt’s part in standardizing the quality in 
this department, here, as with the spool tenders, 
requirement as to quality had recently caused a 
temporary drop in wages. ‘This change in requirement 
was occasioned, not as at the spool tending by the negli- 
gence of the workers, but by the somewhat unreason- 
able caprice of a customer. Knots in the texture, 
formerly sewed down as they were, are now cut and 
fastened differently. To learn this process meant 
just as hard work for the girls, and put them back 
temporarily to their old day rate,! though they were 
recently becoming sufficiently quick in the new process 
to earn the bonus as well as before. 

By and large, the wages of the women workers in the 
cotton mill had been increased by Scientific Manage- 
ment. 

Their hours had not been affected. These were in 
all instances 105 a day and 53 on Saturday. There 
was no overtime. But on five nights in the week, 
women preparing yarn for the following day worked 


1 At the same time work was slack so that week wages had dropped 
to $3 and $4. 


SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT 259 


at speeding and spinning from six at night until six 
in the morning, with half an hour for lunch at midnight. 
This arrangement had always been the custom of the 
mill. The girls go home at six for breakfast, sleep 
until about half past four, rise, dress, and have supper, 
and go to work in the mill again at six. The night 
workers I visited had worked at night in other mills 
in New England before they worked in New Jersey. 
Their sole idea of work, indeed, was night work; and 
if it were closed in one mill, they sought it in another. 
One of the youngest girls, a clever little Hungarian 
of 17, who had been only 3 years in this country and 
could barely speak English, knew America simply as a 
land of night work and of Sundays, and had spent 
her whole life here like a little mole. The present 
owner, the superintendent, and the head of the plan- 
ning department all seriously disliked night work for 
women, and said they were anxious to dispense with it. 
But they had not been able to arrange their output so 
as to make this change, though they intended to in- 
augurate it as rapidly as possible. 

Concerning the health and conservation of the 
strength of the women workers in the mill under Scien- 
tific Management, the task of the speeders and of the 
women at cloth inspection tired the girls no more than 
it had before. In the spool tending and the wind- 
ing, as the two most exhausting operations in each 


260 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


process, the stooping and the stamping of the pedals, 
had been increased by the heightened task, the ex- 
haustion of the workers was heightened. But the 
work of the excitable little spool tender mentioned 
was finally so arranged as to leave her in better health 
than in the days when she was employed on piece- 
work, and the management was now endeavoring to 
eliminate the stooping at the bobbins. At spinning 
almost all the spinners found the work easier than 
before, probably because Scientific Management 
demands that machine supervision and assistance 
shall be the best possible. It must be remembered 
that the adjustment of conditions in the mill here is 
comparatively new. Almost all the girls said: ‘‘ They 
don’t drive you at the mill. They make it as easy for 
you as they can.” It was of special value to observe 
the operation of Scientific Management in an estab- 
lishment where all the industrial conditions are diffi- 
cult for women. As in the white goods sewing for 
the Cloth Finishing establishment, these industrial 
conditions are unfortunately controlled to a great 
extent by competition and by custom for both the 
employer and the employees. The best omen for the 
conservation of the health of the women workers under 
Scientific Management in the cotton mill was the en- 
tire equity and candor shown by the management in 
facing situations unfavorable for the women workers’ 


SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT 261 


health and their sincere intention of the best practi- 
cable readjustments. 


V 


The application of Scientific Management to women’s 
work in the Delaware Bleachery was very limited, 
extending only to about 12 girls, all employed in fold- 
ing and wrapping cloth.! The factory, on the out- 
skirts of a charming old city in Delaware, is an enor- 
mous, picturesque cement pile, reaching like a bastion 
along the Brandywine River, with its windows over- 
looking the wooded bank of the stream. 

The girls stand in a large room, before tables piled 
with great bolts of material, and stamp tickets and 
style cards, fasten them to the roll, fold over the raw 
edges of the material in a lap, tie two pieces of ribbon 
around the bolt, wrap it in paper, stamp and attach 
other tickets, and tie it up with cord to be shipped. 
Here, after a time-study was made of the quicker girls 
in all the operations, different tasks were set for dif- 
ferent weights of material; and if the task was ac- 
complished, a bonus was paid, amounting, roughly 
speaking, to a quarter of the worker’s hourly wage. 


1 One of the girls issues batches of tickets. Another girl unfolds 
one end of certain of the packages, and inserts a ticket and stamps 
an outside label, to accord with the invoice system of some of the 
purchasers. These girls had received before $5.40 and $4.84 a week, 
respectively, and now receive, the one $5.73, and the other between 
$5 and $6. 


262 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


The arrangement of the different processes was so 
different for each worker, after and before the system 
was installed, that none of the girls could compare the 
different amounts of work she completed at the differ- 
ent times. But the whole output, partly through a 
better routing of the work to the tables, and by paying 
the boys who brought it a bonus of 5 cents for each 
worker who made her bonus, was increased from 
twenty-five to fifty per cent. 

The girls’ hours were decreased from 10% a day with 
frequent overtime up to nine at night to 9; a day with 
no overtime, the Saturday half-holiday remaining un- 
changed. Here is a list of the changes in the week 
wages. ‘The work at the time of the inquiry was slack. 
Sometimes there were only a few hours in the day of 
wrapping of a kind on which the task and bonus was 
applied. Besides, these workers were in the midst of 
an establishment managed by another system. The 
bonus was given on the basis of the former wage. 
And this remained lower in the case of workers em- 
ployed fewer years by the firm, though sometimes their 
task was the same as that of workers employed longer. 
Where the girls wrapped both the heavier and the 
lighter materials, the allotment of these was in the 
hands of a sub-foreman, who, instead of being in the 
new position of a teacher rewarded for helping each 
worker to make her bonus, was in the old position of a 


SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT 263 


distributor of favors. The slackness of the work had 
led the management, in a good-willed attempt to pro- 
vide as well as possible for the employees, to place 
several girls from other departments under this sub- 
foreman. One of these less strong and experienced 
girls, at the time of the inquiry, was receiving such an 
amount of heavy work that she could wrap only enough 
of the task to enable her to earn from $3 to $5 a 
week. The firm’s policy was paternalistic, and while 
in many ways it had a genuine kindness, it was not in 





PER WEEK FoRMERLY 

Folding and ticketing on light material . | $5 to 6 $4.84 
Folding and ticketing omlight material .| 5 to 6 4.84 
Wrapping light material . . . . .| 6to7 4.56 
Wrapping light material .... .| 7to8 4.84 
Wrapping light and heavy material . .| 6 to 6.50 4.56 
Wrapping light and heavy material com- 

bined with napkin tying . . 6 to 7 4.84 
Folding and ticketing both light ‘ee 

heavy material . . 5 to 6 4.84 


Folding and ticketing both light ae 

heavy material (unaccustomed to the 

oe | A A a 4.59 (once 6.69)| 4.56 
Folding and ticketing both light me 

heavy material (unaccustomed to the 

ee eS 5 4.56 
Folding and ticketing both light ina 

heavy material (unaccustomed to the 

MME GI UA Peon a tauhnetn citi ee: Cie? 0018 7 

(in another department) 


264 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


general sympathy with Scientific Management, though 
the superintendent is a thorough and consistent sup- 
porter of the new system. But he had not been able, 
single handed, to achieve all the necessary adjust- 
ments, in spite of the decided increase of output the 
new methods had already obtained for the company. 

Even considering slackness, these increases per week 
for first-rate speed and work, though in many cases 
the work was light, cannot but seem small. All the 
girls lived in attractive houses and pleasant places. 
All but one were with their families. The city has an 
open market. People of all grades of income go to 
market properly with market-baskets, choose food of 
excellent quality, and have fresh vegetables through 
the winter. The ladies of the house, the girls’ moth- 
ers, preserve fruit from June strawberries to autumn 
apple-butter, and exhibit it proudly in row after row 
of glass jars. But the girls’ wages could not pay for 
such living conditions. The girl who was boarding, 
and whose wages were sometimes $5 a week, could 
not always pay her board bill and had almost nothing 
left for other expenses. 

In regard to health and fatigue the main difficulty 
here, as at the Cloth Finishing factory, was in the lift- 


1 All the firms have rest rooms for the girls. The Delaware firm 
and the New Jersey cotton mill have pleasant lunch-rooms, where an 
excellent lunch is provided at cost. 


SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT 265 


ing of heavier pieces of cloth. Two of the girls had 
suffered, since the introduction of the bonus and task, 
by straining themselves in this way. One of them 
was at home ill for a week, and is now quite well 
again. The other girl was away for two months, and 
though she is now at work, had not fully regained her 
health. The company had at once obtained employ- 
ment less straining for the first of these girls, and the 
second said that the firm had always been fair with 
her in arranging the work. It was said that it had 
been Mr. Gantt’s intention to have the heavier lifting 
done by men and boys, instead of combining it with 
the larger tasks the girls now accomplished under the 
new system. But the department had never fully 
carried out its intention, and unfortunately since 
Mr. Gantt’s departure rather more of the heavy 
material had been ordered from the house than before. 

The general good will of the firm, the picturesque 
factory site, the pleasant work-rooms, and the attrac- 
tive living conditions of the Delaware workers gave 
them an extraordinary opportunity to pursue their 
labor healthfully. But because of its incomplete 
adoption, Scientific Management, though it had 
shortened hours, and in most cases had raised wages, 
had proven of less potential value to the workers than 
to those in the more difficult industrial situation ob- 
taining in the cotton mill. 


266 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


VI 

In general, then, Scientific Management for women 
workers in this country may be said as far as it has 
been applied to have increased wages, to have short- 
ened hours, and to have resulted fortunately for the 
health of women workers in some instances and un- 
fortunately in others. 

Wherever a process presented a difficulty which 
remained unremedied, if the task were multiplied, 
the difficulty, of course, was multiplied. No matter 
how greatly the weight of a wagon is lightened, if 
there is a hole in the road of its passage, and the road is 
now to be travelled sixty times a day, instead of twenty 
times, as before, the physical difficulty from this hole 
is not only trebled, but while it may be endured with 
patience twenty times, is not only a muscular, but a 
nervous strain at the sixtieth. This was the situation 
in regard to all unrelieved heavy lifting wherever 
cloth was manipulated, the situation in regard to the 
stooping for the spool tenders, the stamping at the 
winding machine, and the stooping and breakages at 
the sewing-machine. But these points, instead of 
being ignored by the management, were seriously 
regarded by the employers as inimical to their own 
best interests in combination with those of their em- 
ployees, and in all the establishments were in process 
of adjustment. 


SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT 267 


In the present writer’s judgment this adjustment 
would have been inaugurated earlier in several pro- 
cesses and would have been more rapid and effective 
for both the employer’s interest and that of the women 
workers if the women workers’ difficulties had been 
fairly and clearly specified through trade organization. 
Such an organization would also be of value in pre- 
venting danger of injury for workers whose attention 
under Scientific Management should be concentrated 
on their tasks, and of value in supporting the ten- 
dency of Scientific Management to pay work abso- 
lutely according to the amount accomplished by the 
worker, and not under a certain specified rate for this 
amount. 

Scientific Management as applied to women’s work 
in this country is, of course, very recent. This syn- 
thesis of its short history is collected from the state- 
ments made by about eighty of the women workers, 
by Mr. Gantt, and by the owner, superintendent, and 
head of the planning department of the cotton mill, 
by the superintendent and one of the owners of the 
Cloth Finishing factory, and the superintendent and 
one of the owners of the Bleachery. The account 
should be supplemented by several general observa- 
tions. 

The first is that it is difficult to determine where the 
health of a worker has been strained by industry and 


268 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


where by other causes. Quite outside any of the 
narratives mentioned were those of two young women 
employed under Scientific Management whose health 
was hopelessly broken. Both of these poor girls were 
subject to wrong and oppressive maltreatment at 
home. Indeed, from oppression at home, one of the 
girls had repeatedly found refuge and protection in 
the consideration shown to her by the establishment 
where she worked. It was not she who blamed the 
new way of management for her breakdown, but 
people whose impression of her situation was vague 
and lacked knowledge. 

The whole tendency of Scientific Management 
toward truth about industry, toward justice, toward a 
clear personal record of work, established without fear 
or favor, had inspired something really new and 
revolutionary in the minds of both the managers and 
the women workers where the system had been 
inaugurated. Nearly all of them wished to tell and 
to obtain, as far as they could, the actual truth about 
the experiment everywhere. Almost no one wished 
to ‘‘make out a case.”’ This expressed sense of candor 
and codperation on both sides seemed to the present 
writer more stirring and vital than the gains in wages 
and hours, far more serious even than the occasional 
strain on health which the imperfect installation of 
Scientific Management had sometimes caused. 


SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT 269 


These strains on women’s health in industry in 
America — stooping and monotony in all the needle 
trades, jumping on pedals in machine tending, damp- 
ness and heat in cotton production, the standing with- 
out pause for many hours a day throughout the month, 
the lifting of heavy weights in packing and in dis- 
tribution — all these industrial strains for women 
constitute grave public questions affecting the good 
fortune of the whole nation and not to be answered in 
four years, nor by one firm. It is undoubtedly the 
tendency of Scientific Management to relieve all these 
strains. 

No one can see even in part the complications of 
contemporary factory work, the hundred operations 
of human hands and muscles required for placing a 
single yard of cotton cloth on the market, the thousand 
threads spinning and twisting, the thousand shuttles 
flying, the manifold folding and refolding and wrapping 
and tying, the innumerable girls working, standing, 
walking by these whirring wheels and twisting threads 
and high piled folding tables, without feeling strongly 
that ours is indeed an industrial civilization, and that 
the conditions of industry not only completely control 
the lives of uncounted multitudes, but affect in some 
measure every life in this country to-day. 

No finer dream was ever dreamed than that the 
industry by which the nation lives should be so man- 


270 MAKING BOTH ENDS MEET 


aged as to secure for the men and women engaged in it 
their real prosperity, their best use of their highest 
powers. By and large, the great task of common daily 
work our country does to-day is surely not so managed, 
either by intent or by result, either for the workers or 
for the most “‘successful”’ owners of dividends. How 
far Scientific Management will go toward realizing 
its magnificent dream in the future will be determined 
by the greatness of spirit and the executive genius 
with which its principles are sustained by all the peo- 
ple interested in its inauguration, the employers, the 
workers, and the engineers. 


PR following pages contain advertisements of a 


few of the Macmillan books on kindred subjects 








Some Ethical Gains through Legislation 


By FLORENCE KELLEY, Secretary of the National Con- 
sumers’ League 


This interesting volume has grown out of the author’s experience 
in philanthropic work in Chicago and New York, and her service 
for the State of Illinois and for the Federal Government in inves- 
tigating the circumstances of the poorer classes, and conditions in 
various trades. 
The value of the work lies in information gathered at close range 
in a long association with, and effort to improve the condition of, 
the very poor. 

Cloth, leather back, t2mo, $1.25 net; by mail, $1.35 


Wage-Earming Women 


By ANNIE MARION MacLEAN, Professor of Sociology in 
Adelphi College 


“This book needed to be written. Society has to be reminded that 
the prime function of women must ever be the perpetuation of the 
race. It can be so reminded only by a startling presentation of 
the woman who is ‘speeded up’ on a machine, the woman who 
breaks records in packing prunes or picking hops, the woman who 
outdoes all others in vamping shoes or spooling cotton.... The 
chapters give glimpses of women wage-earners as they toil in dif- 
ferent parts of the country. The author visited the shoeshops, and 
the paper, cotton, and woollen mills of New England, the depart- 
ment stores of Chicago, the garment-makers’ homes in New York, 
the silk mills and potteries of New Jersey, the fruit farms of Cali- 
fornia, the coal fields of Pennsylvania, and the hop industries of 
Oregon. The author calls for legislation regardless of constitutional 
quibble, for a shorter work-day, a higher wage, the establishment 
of residential clubs, the closer codperation between existing organ- 
izations for industrial betterment.” — Boston Advertiser. 


Cloth, leather back, 12mo, $1.25 net; by mail, $1.35 


THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 


Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 


American Social Progress Series 


EDITED BY 
Proressor SAMUEL McCUNE LINDSAY, Pu.D., LL.D. 


COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 


A series of handbooks for the student and general reader, giving the 
results of the newer social thought and of recent scientific investiga- 
tions of the facts of American social life and institutions. Each vol- 


ume about 200 pages. 


1— The New Basis of Civilization. By Simon N. PATTEN, Ph.D., 
LL.D., University of Pennsylvania. Price, $1.00 mez. 


2—Standards of Public Morality. By ArrHuR TwINInc HaAp- 
LEY, Ph.D., LL.D., President of Yale University. Price, $1.00 


net. 


3— Misery and Its Causes. By Epwarp T. Devine, Ph.D., LL.D., 
Columbia University. Price, $1.25 met. 


4—Government Action for Social Welfare. By JEREMIAH W. 
Jenks, Ph.D., LL.D., Cornell University. Price, $1.00 mez. 


5—Social Insurance. A Program of Social Reform. By HENRY 
Rocers SEAGER, Ph.D., Columbia University. Price, $1.00 


net, 


6—The Social Basis of Religion. By Simon N. PATTEN, Ph.D., 
LL.D., University of Pennsylvania, Price, $1.25 ev. 


7— Social Reform and the Constitution. By Frank J. Goopnow, 
LL.D., Columbia University. 


THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 


By SCOTT NEARING, Pu.D. 
Of the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania 


Social Adjustment 
Cloth, 377 pages, $1.50 net 


“Tt is a good book, and will help any one interested in the study of 
present social problems.” — Christian Standard, 


“A clear, sane gathering together of the sociological dicta of to-day. 
Its range is wide — education, wages, distribution and housing of popu- 
lation, conditions of women, home decadence, tenure of working life 
and causes of distress, child labor, unemployment, and remedial meth- 
ods. A capital reading book for the million, a text-book for church 
and school, and a companion for the economist of the study desk,”’ — 
Book News Monthly. 


Wages in the United States 
Cloth, r2mo. Preparing 


This work represents an examination of statistics offered by various 
states and industries in an effort to determine the average wage in the 
United States. Asa scholarly and yet simple statement it is a valuable 
contribution to the study of one side of our social organization. 


Economics 


By SCOTT NEARING and FRANK D. WATSON, both In- 
structors in Political Economy in the Wharton School of Finance 
and Commerce, University of Pennsylvania 


Cloth, 8v0, 493 pages, $1.90 net 


The book discusses the whole subject of prosperity of the factors which 
enter into the complex economic life of the nation. A young man who 
wishes to read even the daily paper with full intelligence would find 
time spent in reading this book well employed for the help which it 
would give him in understanding current discussions of such topics as 
the standard of living; the natural resources of the country and their 
conservation; the relations of labor and immigration; of the labor of 
women and children to industrial progress; of organization in business 
and its tendencies; of the growth and functions of large corporations ; 
of public ownership; of the various experiments which have been tried 
at different times, or the programmes which social leaders are now pro- 
posing for the remedy or the prevention of economic injustice. 


THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 


By MARY W. BROWN 


Secretary of the Henry Watson Children’s Aid Society, Baltimore 


The Development of Thrift 


Cloth, r2mo, $1.00 net 


“An excellent little manual, a study of various agencies, their 
scope and their educating influences for thrift. It abounds in 
suggestions of value.” — Chicago [nter- Ocean. 


The Principles of Relief 


Cloth, $2.00 net 


“ Text-books of sociology which are at once theoretical and prac- 
tical, aiding alike the citizen who seeks to fulfil intelligently his 
duty toward the dependent classes and the volunteer or profes- 
sional worker in any branch of social service, are rare enough; 
and Dr. Devine’s book is a valuable addition to this class of litera- 
ture. ... Comprehensive in scope, and masterly in treatment, 
the book shows thorough knowledge of all phases of the relief 
problem of to-day; and it combines with the student’s careful 
presentation of facts as they are, the humanist’s vision of what 
they yet may be.” — Boston Transcript. 


“A distinct contribution to the literature of scientific philanthropy. 
It marks a step in the development of that literature, for in it are 
brought to consciousness, perhaps for the first time fully, the un- 
derlying principles on which the charity organization society move- 
ment is based. Moreover, it undertakes to give a comprehensive 
statement of the elementary principles upon which all relief giving, 
whether public or private, should rest; and it correlates these 
principles with the general facts of economics and sociology in 
such a way as to leave no doubt in the mind of the reader that the 
author has mastered his subject. The point of view of the book 
is constructive throughout, as its author evidently intends; and it 
is safe to say that for many years to come it will be, both for the 
practical worker and for the scientific student, the authoritative 
work upon the ‘ Principles of Relief’ ”” — Annals of the American 

Academy. 


THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 


The Tenement House Problem 


Edited by ROBERT W. DE FOREST and LAWRENCE 
VEILLER 


The most authoritative and comprehensive work on this subject, 
written by various authors and illustrated with eighty photographs 
and charts. 


VOLUME ONE 


CONTENTS: — Tenement Reform in New York since 1901; The 
Tenement House Problem; Tenement House Reform in New 
York City, 1834-1900; Housing Conditions in Buffalo; Housing 
Conditions and Tenement Laws in Leading American Cities; 
Housing Conditions and Tenement Laws in Leading European 
Cities; A Statistical Study of New York’s Tenement Houses; 
The Non-enforcement of the Tenement House Laws in New 
Buildings; Tenement House Fires in New York; Tenement 
House Fire Escapes in New York and Brooklyn; Back to Back 
Tenements; Tenement House Sanitation; Small Houses for 
Working Men; Financial Aspects of Recent Tenement House 
Operations in New York; The Speculative Building of Tenement 
Houses; Tenement Evils as seen by the Tenants; Tenement 
Evils as seen by an Inspector; Tuberculosis and the Tene- 
ment House Problem; The Relation of Tuberculosis to the 
Tenement House Problem. 


VOLUME TWO 


CONTENTS: — Parks and Playgrounds for Tenement Districts; 
Prostitution as a Tenement House Evil; Policy; A Tenement 
House Evil; Public Baths; A Plan for Tenements in Connection 
with a Municipal Park; Foreign Immigration and the Tenement 
House in New York City; Appendices. 


In Two Volumes, Cloth, 8v0, $3.00 net 


THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 





y 


et gg 


_ao- 
oe 


oe ) ua 7 


= «ee a oe 


—— 


= 


a 








— 








UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS-URBANA 


30112 





11 


075982766 


